Cadillac Adopts Apollo Program Playbook to Build Unit from the Ground Up for Melbourne Startline.

A little more than a full year in the past at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were finally given the go-ahead as Formula One’s latest participant for the 2026 season. Establishing the organization from scratch has involved a frenetic pace of work that the team boss, Graeme Lowdon, has compared to the Apollo moon landing. As the sport descends on the Vegas strip this weekend, Cadillac know the clock is ticking.

The Race Against Time to Melbourne

At the last event of the season to be held in the America, with just over a hundred days to go before they hit the circuit for the maiden outing in Australia at the 2026 season opener, Cadillac have come on in leaps and bounds but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are cognizant there will not be enough hours in the day.

The CTO, Nick Chester, became part of the newly formed project in early 2023 soon after it was established, when the team were without even an confirmed place. He has been at its center from that point and has a knowing grin when thinking about the ride.

“There might be a brief moment reflecting at what the team has achieved and think: ‘Wow, how impressive what the team has created in less than three years,’” he says. “And then the following moment you realize: ‘Yes, there is still a great deal to do.’”

A One-of-a-Kind Opportunity

The CTO enjoyed success at Renault in Alonso's title-winning seasons of the mid-2000s and was in control of technical development at the recently formed Mercedes-Benz Formula E team, but no other project has quite compared with the challenge of launching the iconic American Cadillac marque, a manufacturer-backed entry backed by the owner, GM, into Formula One.

“Building an grand prix team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he says. “It is like nothing else. In an existing team you don’t get the possibility to transform organizational mindset.”

With every day that goes by focus are sharper on the looming decisive point in Australia and targets are being set realistically.

“You have to assume that any incoming team joining the grid is going to be last but just making it to the starting line will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon stated earlier this year and while Nick Chester echoed this he thought the organization had a statement to make as well.

“The first thing we intend to prove is that we belong on the grid,” he emphasizes. “So that we show up and we perform competently. We want to show that we’re a proper team executing the right things on the track. When we have demonstrated that we’re really credible, then we want to show improvement after that.”

Driver Lineup and Hiring Push

In August they contracted Checo Pérez and Valtteri as their racers for the 2026 season, a duo distinguished for their priceless expertise in performing at the leading positions in two top-tier teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas expressed the mood of combative optimism.

“Naturally, we’re realistic,” he said. “We have a huge amount of work to do, and we expect almost certainly a tough opening, because it's the top level of motorsport. But we aren't joining to finish last. In my view with this setup, with this group, this staff, there is every reason that we won't be able to get relatively quickly to a competitive level and achieve good results.”

To that end staff acquisition has been in overdrive, with personnel now reaching more than 400 and planned to reach the target of 600 swiftly. In addition to their existing facility at Silverstone, the team are in the midst of finishing an headquarters at Fishers, Indiana in Indianapolis and there is the GM works in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building the facility to manufacture the new engine, set for the 2029 season – until then they will operate with Ferrari power units – and the aerodynamic facility in Cologne, Germany. It is a intricate structure, different from the trend in the sport for greater centralisation, and has prompted the fresh organizational mindset to which the CTO alluded.

Apollo Model

“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” stated Lowdon shortly before the Silverstone race in mid-season. “We’re realistic, we know how difficult it is. The schedules, are extremely compressed. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it can seem that way.”

So they have adopted, rather than the traditional management structure, a decentralized management similar to that of NASA's, where there were a range of specialist groups all working on various components of the program across a variety of locations.

“When you must follow a procedure where someone has a problem and they escalate it to their supervisor, that manager consults a supervisor in another department, it goes back down the chain, the process is very slow,” explains the CTO. “We give authority to people to take charge. Moving away from managerial sign-off for each action is so much cleaner and faster.”

The Future

The effectiveness of this nimble approach will be proven in the pressure of racing next season and there is a significant degree on the line for F1, too. The Cadillac team have taken on as their test driver the young American Colton Herta