Cadillac will be racing with a Ferrari engine and transmission for its debut, but will not be using all of the permitted parts: Pat Symonds reveals the reasons behind this decision.
Cadillac will not be using its own power unit for its Formula 1 debut, which is not due to arrive until the 2029 season, but will instead use Ferrari engines and gearboxes for the time being. However, the American team is refraining from using as many parts as the technical regulations would allow.
By way of comparison, the second Ferrari customer team in the field, Haas, even uses suspension, steering, and the steering wheel from Maranello in its VF-26. However, this was out of the question for Cadillac, emphasizes Pat Symonds, the team’s technical advisor.
“What we may have done a little differently than, say, the last new team that came in is that we firmly believe that we should take our destiny into our own hands and that we are a works team,” the Briton even alludes to the Haas team. “We will be a works team.”
“So if you look at our car, you’ll see that we didn’t just buy all the components we could,” Symonds emphasizes. “We decided that since we’re using the Ferrari engine, we’ll also use the Ferrari gearbox, but we didn’t buy the entire rear end, as others might have done.”
Important decision to make progress
“We felt that we needed to build our own gearbox housing, our own rear suspension, and so on.” The technical regulations of the premier class would have allowed the team to take over and use the parts from Ferrari.
“Although there are a number of parts that we could still legally adopt, we decided against it,” the experienced Formula 1 engineer reiterates his statement and explains: “I think it’s very important to understand the philosophy behind your own design if you want to make progress.”
Given that Cadillac is planning to develop its own powertrain and wants to completely break away from Ferrari by the 2029 season, this decision is crucial, according to Symonds. “It’s difficult to further develop someone else’s philosophical design if you don’t understand all the nuances involved.”
