Cadillac Formula 1 team principal Graeme Lowdon has given an update on the outfit’s current infrastructure, which is still being developed.
F1’s newest squad operates from several locations, mainly its Silverstone hub, while it makes the most of General Motors facilities in North Carolina and Michigan, and uses Toyota’s wind tunnel in Cologne.
Cadillac has been building a new F1 factory in Fishers, in the Indianapolis suburbs, while its power unit department will be based in the Charlotte area where the parent company is already based.
Meanwhile, the team keeps chasing its first Q2 appearance and maiden world championship points.
“We’re still building,” Lowdon said. “It’s building the plane while flying in it, or the ship while we’re sailing in it. We are still doing that. We’re still building factories.
“Next to my desk are some steel toecap boots and a hard hat, and we go and look at construction sites. A very, very big one in Indianapolis, and then a smaller one in Silverstone. And obviously the PU company is building the factory down in Charlotte as well.
Cadillac F1 Team works shop in Silverstone
Photo by: Cadillac Communications
“We’re still recruiting like mad as well, and so there’s still an awful lot of building going on. And then Q2 of this year has kind of allowed us to start understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the MAC-26 as well, and also the strengths and weaknesses of the team operationally.
“We like to say every day is a school day. If it’s a day where we haven’t learned something, it’s a day we’ve wasted. And so we’re just trying to find every area that we can improve and constantly, constantly improve.
“And at the minute, it’s big chunks because there’s just so much to do and there’s so much that’s new as well. And so we’re somewhere off that area where you’re just refining things, where I think a lot of the other teams are probably more in that mode.”
As far as the Fishers factory is concerned, Lowdon hinted at “more announcements soon about when various things will come online”, with the new simulator “going in as we speak”.
“It’s still in construction at the moment,” the Briton explained. “It’ll be phased, because it’s 450,000 square feet. It’s not small.”
Asked if things would start next year at Fishers, Lowdon replied: “In broad terms, yes. It’s very well advanced, the whole construction there, but it’s a huge project.
“There’s a lot happening and coming online at Silverstone as well.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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