Pat Symonds: Cadillac's No. 00 chassis is almost ready.

      Representatives of the senior management of the new Cadillac team have repeatedly assured that work on building their first Formula 1 car is on schedule, and now Pat Symonds, who serves in the project as executive engineering consultant, has confirmed that.

      However, he did not downplay the scale of the difficulties the team has to overcome in preparing for its debut season.

      “We are fully on schedule,” 72-year-old Symonds said in an interview with The Athletic. “The date by which our first chassis will be ready for homologation was set many months ago. And the car will be assembled by that day.

      “The situation is somewhat daunting, but everyone at Cadillac is demonstrating incredible determination. Until March 7 this year we didn’t even have official clearance to participate in the championship, and yet there were only 364 days left until the start of the first practice in Australia. Assembling a team in that time would have been impossible.”

      But Cadillac began the preparation process long before the application of the championship’s 11th team was finally approved; for example, wind-tunnel testing of the prototype of the future car began back in 2024.

      According to Symonds, over the past year the team’s staff has more than doubled and already numbers 426 employees, but that figure will grow to 600. They will work across three bases located in the United States and in Silverstone, UK. Meanwhile construction of the main Cadillac F1 headquarters in the state of Indiana is still underway; the team’s engine-building division is also in the process of being established.

      Symonds made it clear that they have succeeded in recruiting many specialists with excellent reputations in the world of motorsport: “We won’t necessarily be the biggest team, but I hope we will definitely be the smartest.

      “When I joined this project, I was struck by how well all the work had been done. I will never say that building a Formula 1 car is an easy task. But I have already been involved with around forty cars, so I know how it’s done and how much time it takes.

      “We already have our first chassis practically ready, capable of racing — chassis No. 00. It is intended for crash tests and other stages related to homologation. Many different components of the car have also been manufactured, and we are starting to work with them. And in November the team’s first shipments will be sent by sea to Australia — a fully equipped pit wall and garage equipment.”

      Cadillac’s near-term plans include static tests of the finished car, which are due to begin in December, and its initial shakedown is scheduled for January 2026, ahead of the official pre-season tests in Barcelona.

      “I don’t think we are in any way constrained by the fact that we are creating a new team. We just face a slightly different task, but by the time we line up in Melbourne everything absolutely must be ready,” Symonds concluded.

      Experienced professionals Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez will drive for Cadillac F1 in its debut season, Colton Herta has become the reserve driver, and Pietro Fittipaldi has been entrusted with simulator duties.