{"id":484203,"date":"2026-02-16T19:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/484203\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T19:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:17:09","slug":"cadillac-used-fake-tyres-in-wind-tunnel-testing-for-f1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/484203\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac used fake tyres in wind tunnel testing for F1 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cadillac<\/a> will make its Formula 1 debut in 2026, but the preparation it made to reach this point was not without any setbacks, particularly in wind tunnel testing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The General Motors brand has become the championship\u2019s 11th team this year after its entry was formally approved in March 2025<\/a>, finally putting an end to what was a drawn-out process.<\/p>\n

It coincides with F1\u2019s new regulation changes which are arguably its biggest in history, as the chassis has become approximately 32kg lighter with less downforce, while the power unit is more electrical.<\/p>\n

So because of that, plus how Cadillac\u2019s eventual entry had been long expected, preparation actually began prior to March, but the American outfit did hit a snag with hoping to use Pirelli tyres in the wind tunnel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had some things against us,\u201d said the team\u2019s engineering consultant Pat Symonds. \u201cFor example, we were able to start looking at some development of the \u201826 regulations prior to the start of January [2025], but we were still sort of guessing what some of those regulations would be.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost importantly, we didn’t actually have the Pirelli tyres to run in the wind tunnel, so we made our own tyres.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other teams had Pirelli contracts in place that gave them the tyres ready to start running 1 January. We didn’t get ours until, well, getting on towards the end of the month, and when we put them on, they were a different shape to what we’d sort of guessed they might be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat meant that a lot of avenues that we’d been working on, we had to re-optimise. So some people think we started our area of development ahead of the others; I would say we started it behind the others.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Graeme <\/p>\n

Graeme Lowdon, Team Principal of Cadillac Formula 1 Team and Pat Symonds, Executive Engineering Consultant of Cadillac Formula 1 Team<\/p>\n

Photo by: Clive Mason\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But it all worked out okay in the end as Cadillac, unlike Williams<\/a> or Aston Martin, was on track for day one of 2026\u2019s first collective shakedown in Barcelona, before also running in Bahrain testing last week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLess than 12 months ago, we didn’t even have an entry, let alone a car or some factories or anything else like that,\u201d said team principal Graeme Lowdon in Bahrain.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, the progress has been huge. What I’m really happy about is we hit all of our timelines on time: we fired the car up in early December, we went onto the VTT (Virtual Test Track) in mid-December to do the all-car dyno stuff, we did the shakedown on schedule in Silverstone, we were in Barcelona for the shakedown on schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve seen from other teams that it’s not easy to do that. So, I’m really, really proud. But it wouldn’t make sense to do any of that if we didn’t feel as if we were on a forward trajectory performance-wise as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd the shakedown work that we did in Barcelona was really useful. Now the attention really focuses to understanding our car and running it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve done over 1,700 kilometres here in three days and trust me, as a new team, that is the biggest proportion of our data that literally we never had. That would be tiny for an existing team, but for us it’s massive. So, real progress and just very, very proud of the whole team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Ronald Vording<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cadillac will make its Formula 1 debut in 2026, but the preparation it made to reach this point…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":484204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,239802,240338,245237,238577,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-484203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bahrain-international-circuit","11":"tag-bahrain-pre-season-testing","12":"tag-cadillac-used-fake-tyres-in-wind-tunnel-testing-for-f1-2026","13":"tag-cadillac-ferrari","14":"tag-f1","15":"tag-formula-1","16":"tag-formula1","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=484203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/484203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/484204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=484203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=484203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=484203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}