Inside Cadillac’s race to be ready: ‘a miracle from a standing start’

F1's newest team have built acar from scratch and join the grid aiming to become a championship-winning force

- Giles Richards Melbourne

W hen the new Formula One season begins on Sunday in the usual fever of excitement and anticipation, consider the Cadillac team.

Before the lights go out in Melbourne, F1’snewest entrant will have a deserved chance to take a breath and savour for but amoment, their achievement of simply having made it to the grid.

The US team backed by General Motors has been built, aside from those involved in the pre-planning, from scratch in what will bea year and a day since its entry was approved. As their team principal, Graeme Lowdon, explained, that process had begun in an empty room witha screwdriver and an ‘A4 sheet of paper.

While Audi are alsonew entrants, they have taken over the extant Sauber team; Cadillac are the first new constructor to enter asa startup since Haas joined a decade ago. The drivers Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez will be the veterans at the sharp end and Bottas, a10-time race winner who competed alongside Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes when the team were the benchmark in F1, is well placed to appreciate what Cadillac have pulled off.

“Everyone has worked their ass off the last months,” he says. “For us to do our shakedown in January at Silverstone that was for mea miracle. When you put that in perspective, what an achievement fora team froma standing start.

“It’s difficult to explain how many hundreds of people you need. How many thousands of pieces you need to first design and then manufacture. There are so many things in the car that can go wrong. It’s just so much work from everyone to get here. It’s really important to try to put that across, because people just hear: ‘Oh, it’s a new team} and assume that was a relatively simple thing”