Cadillac copy Nasa playbook to build F1 team from scratch to hit Melbourne startline | Formula One

TTwelve months ago at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Cadillac finally got the green light as the newest Formula One car for 2026. Building a team from scratch entailed a frantic pace of work that team leader Graham Loudon likened to the Apollo moon landing. This weekend, as Formula 1 comes to Vegas, Cadillac knows it's running out of time.

With just over 100 days left before they take to the track for the first time in Melbourne for the 2026 opener, Cadillac have made leaps and bounds in what must seem like a Sisyphean task, but they know there will never be enough hours in the day.

Chief Technology Officer Nick Chester joined the nascent team in March 2023, shortly after its formation, when the team did not even have a confirmed roster yet. He has been in his heart ever since and enjoys a wry smile whenever he thinks about the trip.

“You can look back at what you've done for five minutes and think, 'Wow, isn't it fantastic what we've done in less than three years,'” he says. “And the next minute you think, 'Yeah, we still have a lot to do.'

Chester enjoyed success at Renault in 2005 and 2006, when Fernando Alonso won the title, and was responsible for technical leadership at the new Mercedes Formula E team, but nothing compares to the challenge of bringing the all-American Cadillac brand into Formula One, a factory project backed by parent company General Motors.

“Building a Formula 1 team from scratch, when will you ever get the chance to do that?” he says. “It's like nothing else. With an established team, you don't have the ability to change the culture.”

With each passing day, minds become more focused on Australia's impending moment of truth and expectations are met. “You have to assume that any new team that comes in will be last, but just getting on the grid will be an achievement in itself,” Loudon noted this year, and while Chester echoed this, he felt the team also had something to prove.

“The first thing we want to show is that we need to be there,” he says. “For us to show up and perform well. We want to show that we are a real team doing the right things on the track. Once we show that we can really be relied upon, we want to show progress after that.”

In August they signed Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas as their drivers for 2026, a pair known for their invaluable experience at the cutting edge of the sport's two biggest teams, Red Bull and Mercedes, and Bottas reflected a mood of combative optimism. “Of course we are realistic,” he said. “There's a lot of work to be done and it's probably going to be a tough start because it's Formula 1. But we're not here to stay behind. I think with this structure, with this group, with these people, there's no reason why we can't pick up the pace relatively quickly and have some success.”

To this end, recruitment has been intensified: the number of staff now exceeds 400 people, and the target of 600 people is planned to be quickly reached. In addition to its current base at Silverstone, the team is completing construction on its headquarters at Fishers in Indianapolis, as well as a GM plant in Charlotte, North Carolina, where they are building a plant to produce a new engine planned for 2029 (they will use Ferrari powertrains until then) and a Toyota wind tunnel in Cologne. It is a complex organization that bucks Formula One's trend towards greater centralization and has inspired the new cultural approach that Chester spoke of.

“It's very similar to Project Apollo,” Loudon said shortly before the British Grand Prix in July. “We're realistic, we know how difficult it is. The time frame, it's super, super, super short. OK, we're not putting a man on the moon, but sometimes it feels like that.”

So they adopted, instead of the usual hierarchical system, a flat management structure similar to that used at NASA, which had multiple Apollo teams working on different aspects of the project in different locations.

“If you have to go through a process where someone has a problem and they report it to their manager, that manager talks to a manager somewhere else, and everything goes back up the chain, it's very slow,” says Chester. “This way, we give people the opportunity to really take on this challenge. It makes it much cleaner and faster to give up management approval.”

The effectiveness of this flexible approach will be tested in the heat of competition next season, and there is a lot of money at stake for Formula 1. Cadillac hired 25-year-old Californian Colton Hertha, a multi-time IndyCar winner, as a test driver with the goal of getting him a seat in Formula 2 next season. Vegas is one of three races in the US where the sport recently struck a TV rights deal with Apple, but a successful Cadillac with a potential American driver is likely to provide exponential growth to the sport's already growing popularity here.

For now, for a startup team in 2026, it may be enough to simply follow the NASA adage, “Failure is not an option.”

“The people who have joined us really want to take on the challenge of a new team and build the first car for a new team,” says Chester. “The level of enthusiasm, excitement, cooperation is amazing. There are a lot of smiling faces around the factory.

“No doubt there are a few little wrinkles that sometimes make people feel a little tired, but they enjoying what they do.”