Cadillac Employs Apollo Program Strategy to Assemble Team from Scratch for Melbourne Startline.

A little more than one year in the past at the Vegas Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally awarded the official approval as F1's newest entry for 2026. Building the organization from scratch has entailed a hectic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has likened to the NASA lunar mission. As F1 arrives on Vegas this weekend, the team are aware the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the championship to be staged in the US, with around 100 days to go before they hit the circuit for the inaugural time in Australia at the 2026 opener, the Cadillac F1 project have advanced rapidly but, in what must seem like a never-ending endeavor, they are aware there will not be enough hours in the day.

The chief technical officer, Nick Chester, became part of the nascent operation in early 2023 shortly after it was established, when the squad were without even an official entry. He has been at its heart from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the journey.

“There might be five minutes looking back at what the team has achieved and go: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “But then the following moment you consider: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

The CTO achieved victories at the Renault team in Alonso's title-winning seasons of 2005 and 2006 and was in charge of engineering strategy at the then-new Mercedes Formula E team, but no previous experience has been quite like the challenge of introducing the all-American Cadillac marque, a factory team sponsored by the owner, General Motors Corporation, into F1.

“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, when will you ever have the possibility to do that?” Chester remarks. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you won't have the opportunity to transform team culture.”

With every day that passes minds are more focused on the approaching decisive point in Australia and expectations are being handled.

“One must presume that any new team coming in is likely to start at the back but merely participating will be an feat in itself,” Lowdon stated earlier this year and while the CTO shared this view he felt the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we aim to demonstrate is that we deserve to be there,” Chester explains. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team doing the correct procedures on the race track. After we’ve shown that we’re really credible, then we want to show forward movement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Push

In August they recruited Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their invaluable experience in performing at the front in two of the sport’s biggest teams, the Red Bull team and the Mercedes team, and the Finnish driver expressed the sentiment of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” Bottas stated. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect probably a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to stay at the back. In my view with this structure, with these individuals, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to advance swiftly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”

To realize that ambition recruitment has been in overdrive, with personnel now at in excess of 400 and planned to attain the objective of six hundred quickly. Complementing their current base at Silverstone, the squad are in the process of completing an HQ at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the General Motors facility in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to build the power unit, planned for the 2029 season – in the meantime they will use power from Ferrari – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a sophisticated organization, different from the movement in Formula One for greater centralisation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.

NASA Blueprint

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal ahead of the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we know how challenging it is. The timelines, are extremely compressed. OK, we aren't launching a lunar mission, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, rather than the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all tackling distinct elements of the project in a variety of locations.

“If you have to go through a process where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their manager, that manager talks to a supervisor in another department, it is relayed back, it’s super slow,” says Chester. “So we empower people to handle things directly. Moving away from hierarchical consent for all decisions is so much cleaner and quicker.”

Upcoming Challenges

The efficacy of this nimble approach will be tested in the heat of competition when the season begins and there is a considerable amount riding on this for the sport, too. Cadillac have taken on as their development driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta