Cadillac Adopts Apollo Program Approach to Construct Squad from Scratch for Australian Startline.

Approximately one year in the past at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac were finally given the go-ahead as F1's newest entrant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has entailed a intense operating tempo that the principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 converges on Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Australia

At the last event of the campaign to be staged in the United States, with approximately a hundred days to go before they take to the track for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the 2026 opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a sisyphean task, they are conscious there will never be enough hours in the day.

The technical director, Nick Chester, joined the newly formed operation in March 2023 not long after it was created, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its heart from that point and enjoys a knowing grin when reflecting on the ride.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what you’ve done and say: ‘Incredible, isn’t this fantastic what we’ve done in a short three-year period,’” Chester states. “And then the following moment you think: ‘Yes, we’ve still got a significant amount to do.’”

A Unique Opportunity

Nick Chester enjoyed success at Renault in Fernando Alonso’s victorious campaigns of the mid-2000s and was in command of technical direction at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but nothing has quite compared with the mission of launching the all-American Cadillac marque, a works entry supported by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Creating an F1 team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an well-set team you don’t get the opportunity to transform cultural approach.”

With each passing day that goes by minds are increasingly concentrated on the looming moment of truth in the Australian GP and goals are being managed.

“You have to assume that a brand-new squad entering the sport is going to be last but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated this year and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he emphasizes. “So that we turn up and we perform competently. We aim to demonstrate that we are a serious contender executing the correct procedures on the track. When we have demonstrated that we are a legitimate team, then we want to show forward movement from there on.”

Racing Talent and Recruitment Drive

In August they recruited Checo Pérez and Valtteri Bottas as their racers for the 2026 season, a pair remarkable for their priceless expertise in competing at the front in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes-AMG, and Valtteri Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we are pragmatic,” he commented. “We have a mountain of work to do, and it will likely be most likely a challenging beginning, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. I am confident given this organization, with this group, these personnel, there is every reason that we can't manage to get relatively quickly to the front and taste victory.”

To achieve that goal staff acquisition has been in top gear, with personnel now at over 400 and scheduled to reach the goal of 600 rapidly. Alongside their current base at the Silverstone circuit, the squad are in the phase of building an headquarters at the Fishers location in Indy and there is the GM plant in North Carolina, where they are constructing the center to build the power unit, set for 2029 – in the meantime they will run Ferrari engines – and the Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne, Germany. It is a complex organisation, contrary to the movement in Formula One for more centralization, and has prompted the innovative team culture to which Nick Chester referred to.

NASA Model

“It's closely based on the Apollo project,” remarked the team principal just before the Silverstone race in July. “We are pragmatic, we know how tough it is. The timelines, they’re super, super, super short. OK, it's not a space expedition, but the pressure is comparable.”

So they have embraced, as opposed to the traditional management structure, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a variety of specialist groups all working on various components of the program in a multiple sites.

“If you have to go through a procedure where a challenge emerges and they raise it up to their team leader, that leader communicates with a supervisor at a different location, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” says the CTO. “So we empower staff to handle things directly. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this agile strategy will be evaluated in the pressure of racing next season and there is a considerable amount on the line for Formula One, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the emerging Californian Colton Herta