By Alan Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) – Cadillac will be playing it safe with design deadlines as the General Motors-backed team prepares for a 2026 Formula One debut, according to executive engineering consultant Pat Symonds.
The 11th outfit on the starting grid had their entry formally confirmed last month but have been working for some time on the car.
They still face a race to be ready in time for pre-season testing, which next year is likely to start in Barcelona in late January with two further sessions expected in Bahrain in February.
Cadillac have brought in experience from other teams, Symonds involved in building some 40 cars in decades in the sport including winners with Benetton and Renault, and are well aware of potential pitfalls.
“We have taken what I think is a very conservative approach to producing that car, and I think that’s absolutely the right thing to do,” Symonds, F1’s former chief technical officer, told Reuters when asked about timelines.
“When you have everything established you try and push everything to the last minute so you get maximum performance from the car. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do in our situation.
“We all saw what happened with Williams a few years ago, and we cannot let that sort of thing happen. We have to be up and running, and we have to be running efficiently at our first test in Barcelona next year.
“So we’ve taken quite a conservative approach to what I would say is a well-known problem.”
Williams, once-dominant former champions now fighting back from an extended period among the backmarkers, missed the first two and a half days of testing in 2019 following delays in the production of parts.
New teams have also been pushed to the limit in getting two cars ready in time.
Symonds said the team had to create processes from scratch and cited the example of a recent design discussion about the difficulty of getting the car to the weight limit.
“Anyone who’s got an existing car can say ‘OK, well look, let’s take this front upright. What can we do to get 10% of the weight out of it?’ And you’ve got a starting point, you’ve got a target,” he said.
“We don’t have that starting point, so things like that are difficult.”
Symonds said the infrastructure around a team was complex, trucks had to be ordered a year in advance while hiring staff was complicated by long notice periods and the need for ‘gardening leave’ that delayed start dates.
“We’ve got lots of people who want to come and work for us. Lots of people in the pipeline. Really, really good people. People I’m really happy to employ. But I’m not going to see them until much later,” said Symonds.
Cadillac’s debut car will ultimately be American built at their new racing facility in Fishers, Indiana, but for now the manufacture of parts has been contracted out to suppliers in Britain, where the design team are and will stay.
“We’re very close to a DHL hub there (in Indianapolis). We can get stuff over to the UK or to anywhere in the world very easily,” said Symonds.
“Having a hub in America might actually be an advantage with three races there. So I’m not worried about it.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Christian Radnedge)
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