The all-new Cadillac Formula 1 team is drawing inspiration from NASA`s Apollo missions to meet tight deadlines before its debut next year.
Set to join the F1 grid as the 11th team in 2026, Cadillac faces a 250-day countdown until its first official practice session at the Australian Grand Prix.
Having received confirmation only 115 days prior, the team is now in a race against time to design and manufacture its cars from bases in Silverstone, UK, and the United States.
Significant progress has been made, including building a proof-of-concept chassis that passed unofficial crash testing in the UK (including a 50-tonne front-impact test) and testing an evolving 60% scale model in Toyota`s wind tunnel in Cologne.
During a recent tour of Cadillac`s Silverstone facility, team principal Graeme Lowdon informed journalists that approximately 400 of the planned 600 staff members are now on board for the team`s F1 debut.
To efficiently prepare two cars within the demanding timeframe, Cadillac has adopted a management structure modelled on Apollo`s Mission Control, aiming to minimize traditional hierarchy.
Lowdon explained, “It`s highly modelled on the Apollo project. It`s very similar. OK, we`re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
He highlighted the challenges: “If you look at the task in hand, we`ve got immovable deadlines. We`ve got a massive necessity for peer-to-peer interaction.”
This requires engineers in different locations – Silverstone, Charlotte (North Carolina), Warren (Michigan), and eventually Fishers (Indiana, future US HQ) – to communicate directly. Therefore, the team aims for a very flat management structure.
“We`ve leaned heavily on the management structures that were used for the Apollo project,” Lowdon noted. “It`s super interesting and I don`t know if other teams have used that before.”
“You always look around to get inspiration from how other people have tackled things. And I just thought that there was some good learnings from that,” he added, pondering, “Is it the equivalent of putting a man on the moon? I don`t know about that. But what strikes me is it`s quite a difficult task.”
Lowdon, who previously served as CEO of the former F1 team Manor (under Virgin and Marussia names), believes the Apollo-style structure offers advantages over a conventional team setup.
He contrasted this with typical race teams often described in military terms: “Even if you see a garage tour, someone will say, this is organised in a kind of pyramid, and you have one person at the top. And the typical military structure is command and control. So you issue commands, people do things.”
“When it`s a multi-site team like this, that becomes a massive challenge,” Lowdon explained. “What you can`t have is an engineer here [in Silverstone] having to go up and down a particular hierarchy and then hop across, in our instance, not just to a different geographic location, but a different country altogether, and then go up and down.”
The alternative is the `mission control` approach, fostering a flat structure where engineers can communicate directly. He emphasized that the `mission itself` is heavily impressed upon the team, ensuring everyone knows what needs to be done.
“So far it works,” Lowdon stated, adding pragmatically, “You know, the proof of the pudding is going to be in whether the car`s quick.”
Cadillac plans to further increase its staff numbers in the United States once its new factory in Fishers, Indiana, becomes operational next year.
Lowdon expressed confidence that the team will attract top-level engineers in both the US and Europe, citing the backing of GM (Cadillac`s parent company) and the unique opportunity of joining a start-up F1 team.
He elaborated on their appeal: “I think we offer a number of things… the fact that we are backed by GM is super important because they have the scale as well.” He also highlighted the experienced people already on the team.
“If we look at the kind of team element, we`ve got a lot of experienced people here. And the thing that we can offer them is certainly this flat structure. I`m an engineer myself, and I know if you`ve got a task, you want to talk peer-to-peer and solve it. And so it`s up to us to offer that.”
“But also we can offer a lot of responsibility. You know, when that car turns a wheel for the first time, everyone in here will be able to point at it and say, I did that. None of it`s a legacy. There`s no carryover. That`s hugely, hugely appealing.”
Dominic Ashworth