Guenther Steiner shares the blueprint of success for Cadillac F1
Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez have signed for Cadillac
Guenther Steiner, the former Haas team principal, has stressed that hiring “the right people” is essential for a new team like Cadillac F1.
Cadillac will become the first new team to arrive in F1 since fellow American outfit Haas when it makes its long-awaited debut at the start of the F1 2026 season.
Guenther Steiner: Cadillac F1 must be ‘very picky’ about hiring ‘the right people’
The team is being led by Graeme Lowdon, the former chief executive of the now-defunct Marussia outfit, who was appointed team principal last year.
Cadillac recently reached a significant milestone in its preparations by confirming that veteran pair Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez will race for the team in F1 2026.
Bottas and Perez, who will return to F1 after sitting out the 2025 season, rank among the most experienced drivers in world championship history, with 527 starts and 16 race wins between them.
Analysis: Italian Grand Prix
👉 The eye-opening data behind Max Verstappen’s dominant Italian GP win
Cadillac has also recruited impressively off the track, hiring former Renault men Nick Chester and Rob White to the roles of chief technical officer and chief operations officer respectively.
The American team also brought in Pat Symonds, the former title-winning technical director of the Enstone-based Alpine (then Benetton/Renault) team, whose previous role saw him act as Formula 1’s chief technical officer.
Steiner has opined that putting the right people in place is key to the success of a start-up team, insisting that the likes of Lowdon and chief executive Dan Towriss must be “very picky” about who they bring on board.
The 60-year-old played an instrumental role in the formation of the Haas team, which arrived on the grid in 2016, before leaving his role as team principal at the end of the 2023 season.
He told Champions Speakers in association with PlanetF1.com: “Obviously, when you have a project like putting up an F1 team in the beginning, there are a lot of things you need to think of and the strategic planning is a part of it.
“In the beginning, there is a big picture and then it gets smaller and smaller with every detail.
“I am always a person who wants the best people available around me to help me do this, because it is quite time-intensive to make strategic planning.
“I always had people around me, who I told what we want to achieve strategically for the future, and then put a plan together, review it, better it and keep on refining it.
“But you need people around you to do this, because one person on its own to do a project like an F1 team is not possible.
“The process, once you need to get going, is basically try to find the right people.
“You need to go into who you know in the business and then just interview people and try to get them together. But that is the only way to get a good team together.
“You interview them, you see who are the best – and you are just very picky about it because these will be the people who bring you success or make you fail.
“So if you want success, you just need to work hard to get the right people, and use all channels available, and try to do your best.”
Steiner also stressed the need for a new team to “make changes” swiftly if staff brought on board do not meet expectations, describing it as “the biggest challenge” of being in charge.
He added: “The challenges you’re facing are to get the right people.
“And also the other challenge for me always was you think you’ve got the right people, and then you realise after a few months it isn’t the right people.
“And as bad as it sounds, then you have to make changes, but that’s business. That’s the biggest challenge.
“Then, obviously, the business changes day to day and you need to always stay current with what is going on, how it is moving.
“And then you have challenges with people, because some people maybe don’t like what they got in the end and then you need to find new people.
“But it’s one of the biggest challenges to always keep motivated to do the right thing.”
Read next: PlanetF1.com Postbox: McLaren team order fallout, Verstappen’s title influence
