Motor racing-Off track, the numbers are adding up for F1 newcomers Cadillac

By Alan Baldwin

LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) – Formula One newcomers Cadillac had hoped to be a team everybody would want to join, but even they have been surprised by the response.

The staff numbers, as the General Motors-backed outfit prepare to take to the track with rivals for the first time in a shakedown test at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya from Monday, are adding up.

Principal Graeme Lowdon told Reuters the team, with a British base at Silverstone circuit, had advertised 595 positions with a target of filling 525 by the end of December last year.

“In that time we had 143,265 applications, all of which had to be acknowledged,” he said at last week’s Autosport Business Exchange conference.

“Then I think we shortlisted 9,051 and interviewed around about 6,500…and then we had actually hired 520 by the end of the year. 

“Obviously, that number’s gone up already. But yeah, the people side of it is enormous. But the interest is enormous too.”

Cadillac secured approval in March last year, after initial opposition from rival teams and a 764-day entry process supported by the governing FIA, to become the 11th outfit on the starting grid.

Until March they were not allowed to use “Formula One” in recruitment adverts, for commercial rights reasons, so they had to be for positions available in “top tier motorsport”.

Two of the recruits are race drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas, the Mexican and Finn both winners boasting years of experience.

Others, the vast majority, have come from rival teams.

MORE EXPANSION TO COME  

Cadillac intend to grow ultimately to a headcount of more than 1,000, a number competitive with leading teams, and have a manufacturing headquarters under construction in Indianapolis.

Lowdon said staff, many of whom he had worked with previously, were recruited on core values “because you can teach people technical capability but it’s much more difficult to teach them core values”.

Previously involved from 2010-16 with Manor Motorsport and an F1 team that competed as Virgin and Marussia, the principal spoke of pragmatism and “the power of honesty” in moving forward.

The team have been simulating race weekends since May last year, the engineers initially talking to each other with a mixture of radio protocols brought from other teams but eventually forging their own communication style.

The new car ran for the first time at a damp Silverstone on January 16. 

By the end of December, the Ferrari-powered team calculated they had a combined 2,500 years of experience at management level but only nine months of actually working together.

How Cadillac will fare when the season starts on March 8 in Australia is an open question, with Lowdon saying none of the teams knew at this point where they would be in performance terms.

The important thing, he said, was to control the things that could be controlled while earning the respect of others.  

“Building that whole team spirit and way of working, it’s not straightforward. But I’m really, really pleased with the way it’s going,” said Lowdon. 

“People who’ve won multiple world championships want to be part of this project because they can see it’s a proper racing team.

“This is not a corporate exercise. It’s not a private equity-driven exercise. This is a proper racing team and that’s what people want to be part of.”

(Reporting by Alan Baldwin, editing by Ed Osmond)