Long before the Cadillac F1 team was formally approved for competition 2026, General Motors and TWG Global had a race car built and ready to test. As a newcomer to the field, Caddy and GM face a bit of a disadvantage, but the automaker is doing everything possible to catch up – both literally and figuratively – before next season, even if that means opting for a more conservative approach to building its race cars.
According to a report from Reuters, the Cadillac F1 team is on a bit of a crunch timeline to get ready for preseason testing in 2026, but the crew isn’t rushing into it. Preseason testing is expected to kick off in late January 2026 at Barcelona, followed by more sessions at Bahrain in February, which means there’s less than a year for GM to get itself together.
Executive engineering consultant, Pat Symonds, says that he’s not necessarily concerned about the tight turnaround. Symonds joined the Cadillac F1 team with a wealth of experience building competitive race cars, and while he acknowledges there are some potential obstacles, things are progressing at the right pace.
“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 said in an interview with Reuters. “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 have to be up and running, and we have to be running efficiently at our first test in Barcelona next year.”
Symonds says Caddy took lessons from team Williams a few years ago. Williams missed out on valuable testing time in 2019 due to delays in production of parts – a situation that the Cadillac F1 team is keen to avoid.
But Caddy has been doing everything in its power to avoid that outcome. Symonds says that the team ordered trucks a year in advance, although onboarding staff was made complicated by lengthy notice periods. Having the main facility based in Indianapolis and ordering parts from suppliers overseas can further complicate things, but the shop’s proximity to a shipping depot helps to ease some of those concerns.
Comments
MIllions and millions of dollars spent on this project from the team buy in to development and first showing is with the Ferrari powerplant. What is Cadillac’s end game out of this? Does Mary really think she is going to recover a tenth of this expense? Or is it she just wants front row seats in the owner’s booth for bragging rights.
Just wish my male counterparts would stop with the barrage of misogynistic comments about GM’s CEO when they couldn’t successfully run a mom and pop convenience store.
I read a really interesting article a few weeks ago that most teams actually come out ahead on expenses. Shocking but true.
Cadillac should invest their money into a decent gear shifter, fix how their transmissions engage and operate, and lose the stop start system.