Latest news with #PatSymonds
Reuters
01-04-2025
- Automotive
- Reuters
Cadillac to play safe with deadlines for first F1 car build
LONDON, April 1 (Reuters) - Cadillac will be playing it safe with design deadlines as the General Motors-backed team prepares for a 2026 Formula One debut, according to executive engineering consultant Pat Symonds. The 11th outfit on the starting grid had their entry formally confirmed last month but have been working for some time on the car. They still face a race to be ready in time for pre-season testing, which next year is likely to start in Barcelona in late January with two further sessions expected in Bahrain in February. Cadillac have brought in experience from other teams, Symonds involved in building some 40 cars in decades in the sport including winners with Benetton and Renault, and are well aware of potential pitfalls. "We have taken what I think is a very conservative approach to producing that car, and I think that's absolutely the right thing to do," Symonds, F1's former chief technical officer, told Reuters when asked about timelines. "When you have everything established you try and push everything to the last minute so you get maximum performance from the car. I don't think that's the right thing to do in our situation. "We all saw what happened with Williams a few years ago, and we cannot let that sort of thing happen. We have to be up and running, and we have to be running efficiently at our first test in Barcelona next year. "So we've taken quite a conservative approach to what I would say is a well-known problem." Williams, once-dominant former champions now fighting back from an extended period among the backmarkers, missed the first two and a half days of testing in 2019 following delays in the production of parts. New teams have also been pushed to the limit in getting two cars ready in time. Symonds said the team had to create processes from scratch and cited the example of a recent design discussion about the difficulty of getting the car to the weight limit. "Anyone who's got an existing car can say 'OK, well look, let's take this front upright. What can we do to get 10% of the weight out of it?' And you've got a starting point, you've got a target," he said. "We don't have that starting point, so things like that are difficult." Symonds said the infrastructure around a team was complex, trucks had to be ordered a year in advance while hiring staff was complicated by long notice periods and the need for 'gardening leave' that delayed start dates. "We've got lots of people who want to come and work for us. Lots of people in the pipeline. Really, really good people. People I'm really happy to employ. But I'm not going to see them until much later," said Symonds. Cadillac's debut car will ultimately be American built at their new racing facility in Fishers, Indiana, but for now the manufacture of parts has been contracted out to suppliers in Britain, where the design team are and will stay. "We're very close to a DHL hub there (in Indianapolis). We can get stuff over to the UK or to anywhere in the world very easily," said Symonds. "Having a hub in America might actually be an advantage with three races there. So I'm not worried about it."
Reuters
28-03-2025
- Automotive
- Reuters
F1 return to V10 or V8 engines is years away, says Symonds
LONDON, March 28 (Reuters) - Formula One may have to wait a decade for a return to screaming V10 or V8 engines and jettisoning the next generation V6 due to be introduced next year is simply not feasible, according to F1's former chief technical officer Pat Symonds. The Briton, now executive engineering consultant for the Cadillac team due to debut next year, told Reuters any talk of potentially continuing with the current turbo hybrid beyond 2025 was a non-starter. Formula One has been considering various directions including a return, powered by sustainable fuel, to the ear-splitting naturally-aspirated V10 engines that were last raced in 2005 and whose noise is still missed by many. "I think there's a lot of wishful thinking," said Symonds after a panel discussion at the BlackBook Motorsport Forum in London. "With so much invested in the 2026 engine it would be negligent to throw that investment away -- particularly for the new people like Cadillac, Audi, Red Bull Powertrains who have had to start from scratch and produce an engine which needs a reasonable life to pay that back. "Maybe it won't have a 10-year life but it sure as hell needs more than a two-year life for something like that, because the risk otherwise is that Audi might just say 'well, it's not so long. We're going to go'." The new engine era, a major upheaval for the sport, is due to run from 2026 to 2030. Symonds said the sport did not have to follow five-year cycles, and recent F1 engines have had a lifespan of double that length. He dismissed "crazy ideas" of continuing with the existing engine. "Audi can't do that," he said of the German manufacturer set to debut next year with its own engine after turning Sauber into a works team. "We (Cadillac) have designed a car to fit a Ferrari 2026 engine. We suspect a Ferrari 2025 engine wouldn't fit in that car." Red Bull are switching from Honda units to their own in-house built powertrain while Aston Martin move from Mercedes to Honda. Symonds said a switch could happen eventually but a high-revving V8 made more sense than a V10 providing it was efficient, with a fuel flow limit and some mild hybridisation. "I personally think a V10 is not necessarily a good racing engine," he said. "A V8 probably is. I often feel that the V10 was sort of the result of the discussion between whether we should have a V8 or a V12. It's a typical sort of committee decision." He recognised noise was important to fans as part of the entertainment, but sustainability was key for sponsors, and said there should not be any knee-jerk reactions. "We won't go back to a V8 or a V10 or a V12 as it used to be many years ago," he added. "We've learned an awful lot in the last 11 years now of how to run these engines very, very lean. And we need to continue with that. "It must not be a retrograde step. We've got to keep pushing forward."
