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A little more than a full year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were at last granted the official approval as the world of Formula One's most recent entrant for 2026. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As the sport arrives on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac are aware the deadline is approaching.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, joined the nascent project in March 2023 not long after it was established, when the squad were without even an approved entry. He has been at its core since then and has a amused expression when considering the experience.

“You might get a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, what an achievement what we have built in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Challenge

The CTO had success at the Renault team in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in charge of technical direction at the then-new Mercedes electric racing team, but no previous experience has truly matched the challenge of launching the quintessentially American Cadillac marque, a works entry backed by the owner, General Motors, into Formula One.

“Building an Formula One team from nothing, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an established team you rarely get the possibility to alter team culture.”

With every day that passes thoughts are more focused on the looming moment of truth in Melbourne and goals are being set realistically.

“One must presume that any new team joining the grid is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Lowdon stated this year and while the CTO shared this view he believed the squad had a statement to make as well.

“Our primary goal we intend to prove is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we show up and we function efficiently. We want to show that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the race track. When we’ve shown that our credentials are solid, then we want to show progression from there on.”

Racing Talent and Hiring Effort

In August they recruited Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for 2026, a tandem distinguished for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and the Finnish driver expressed the mood of fighting spirit.

“Of course, we are pragmatic,” he said. “There’s going to be a huge amount of work to do, and it’s going to be almost certainly a difficult start, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we’re not there to finish last. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these people, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and taste victory.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in top gear, with staff now at in excess of 400 and intended to hit the target of 600 members rapidly. In addition to their present headquarters at the UK base, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers in the Indianapolis area and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are developing the plant to manufacture the 2029 engine, scheduled for 2029 – until then they will operate with Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex organization, contrary to the trend in Formula One for more centralization, and has inspired the innovative team culture to which the CTO referred to.

NASA Inspiration

“It’s highly modelled on the NASA moon mission,” remarked Lowdon ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we understand how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Alright, it's not a space expedition, but it feels like it sometimes.”

So they have embraced, rather than the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of Apollo teams all working on different aspects of the mission at a different facilities.

“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that leader talks to a leader at a different location, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” notes the CTO. “So we empower staff to take charge. Eliminating management approval for everything is so much cleaner and more rapid.”

The Future

The success of this flexible strategy will be proven in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for Formula One, too. Cadillac have signed as their reserve driver the emerging American Colton Herta