从零组建凯迪拉克F1赛道团队的挑战
凯迪拉克车队在寻找车队经理时，迅速锁定了哈斯车队长期担任车队经理的彼得·克罗拉。克罗拉渴望新的挑战，并期待再次从零开始组建一支车队。
“不是朝九晚五的巡航”——从零组建凯迪拉克F1赛道团队的挑战
车队经理彼得·克罗拉详述了凯迪拉克成为一支受人尊敬的F1车队的艰难历程
当全新加入的车队凯迪拉克开始寻找车队经理时，距离加入2026年F1发车格还有整整一年，它不需要寻找太久或太远，就确定了合适的目标。
在哈斯——F1上一支在2016年成立的新车队——长期担任车队经理的彼得·克罗拉一直在寻找新的挑战，而再次从零开始组建车队的前景完全符合他的期望。
在与格雷姆·洛登进行了初步对话后——洛登最近被马尔钦·布德科夫斯基取代了车队领队一职，但他一直是凯迪拉克令人尊敬的F1首秀背后的推动力——克罗拉开始了另一次全新的开始，在九个月的时间里从零开始组建一支赛道团队。
“当时我在哈斯已经超过九年了，我绝对准备好迎接改变和新的挑战，我需要一些东西来重新点燃我对这项运动的热情，”克罗拉在最近的比利时大奖赛上、在车队领导层变动之前告诉Autosport。
“我喜欢组建车队的元素。这其中有极大的自豪感，一切都在正确的时间对齐了。这是我的第二次新车队起步，相隔大约10年，这绝对棒极了。那种动力、自主权和兴奋感是无与伦比的。
“那九个月可能是我职业生涯中最享受的时期，从空荡荡的建筑和一个计划开始，并被赋予权力去创造你的愿景。”
凯迪拉克车队经理彼得·克罗拉（右）与前车队领队格雷姆·洛登、技术顾问帕特·西蒙兹以及瓦尔特利·博塔斯
担任车队经理是一项范围极其广泛且多样化的职位，首先要负责赛车队的整体组织工作。一旦赛前物流工作完成，当赛道活动开始时，这份工作就转向更偏向竞技的角色，包括与管理机构国际汽联和F1管理层联络。
但从零开始组建一支新车队为此增加了一个巨大的基础层面，克罗拉借鉴他在哈斯的经验，再次尝试在凯迪拉克从零开始，鉴于F1新进入者稀缺，这是一个非常罕见的机会。
“当时这项运动的情况完全不同，”克罗拉在回顾帮助哈斯诞生时说道。“我们仍处于伯尼·埃克莱斯顿时代。规模是件大事，而且那也是我第一次做这件事。那很令人兴奋。在那段时间里，我和一些很棒的人共事，学到了很多。我认为那为我第二次做这件事打下了良好的基础。”
当被问及他从哈斯学到的主要经验时，克罗拉回答说：“我认为在那段时间里，赛历和对车队的要求都在增长，我希望确保我们以一支大车队的方式来处理这件事，并拥有完成任务所需的一切。”
“在我看来，这从来不是先从小规模开始然后再发展的问题。没有时间这样做，因为一旦你开始比赛，你花在项目上的时间就会大大减少。所以对我来说，就是尽我们所能做好一切，最大化我们可用的预算，并打造一支准备好参赛并做好工作的车队。”
“对我来说，第一年需要有三个支柱。那就是体面的参与。我们准时到场，做所有正确的事情，保持低调。我认为我们做到了这一点。下一个支柱是可靠性，当然我们仍在努力解决这个问题。第三个是性能，我们也进入了那个阶段。所以，事情正如我预想的那样发生。到目前为止一切顺利。”
虽然克罗拉四月份加入时，位于银石的工厂运营已经就位，但将要环游世界的赛道团队仍是一张白纸。克罗拉随后与新入职的团队物流经理皮特·西蒙斯和首席机械师内森·迪维坐下来，规划了通往墨尔本的道路。这包括获取团队所需的硬件，到为赛道运营、赛车制造、进站等制定程序和最佳实践——对任何车队来说都是无尽的挑战，更不用说一支从未合作过的人员组成的团队了。
克罗拉此前在哈斯担任类似职务长达十年。
“我们采取了协作的方式，并对2026年一支优秀赛车队应有的样子有着共同的愿景，”克罗拉解释道。“没有现成的书。没有关于如何做到这一点的指南，但我们非常努力，而且对于想做的事情，几乎没有分歧。”
“我们只知道它必须是最好的，但最重要的是，它必须到位。没有任何借口说东西没到位，因为我认为在九个月内一切都可以实现，尤其是考虑到我们拥有的自主权和预算。我们不得不对供应商施加很大压力，但我们与之前合作过的优秀供应商合作。我们信任的人，这一点非常重要。知道你可以依靠谁，以及可以真正推动谁到极限。”
归根结底，任何组织都取决于其人员的素质，F1也不例外，凯迪拉克组建了一支准备挑战现有格局的车队。考虑到漫长的园艺假时间，这并非易事，尤其是对于一支尚无战绩的车队。
“招聘是我们必须相当积极的事情，因为人们已经有很长的通知期，”克罗拉指出。“在这个运动中，没有人能在少于三个月内真正到位，有些人有六个月的通知期。”
“很多人在2025年下半年加入，没有蜜月期。他们必须立即投入并继续处理所有事情。每天都有大量设备进门，工作量惊人。但每个人都真正迎接了挑战。”
但就像创业文化吸引克罗拉加入凯迪拉克的故事一样，许多从F1大车队挖来的人似乎也有同感。对于车队将面临的挑战，肯定没有搞错，也不存在轻松过关这回事。
“不，我认为如果你从一支成熟车队来到这里，以为就会像那样，那就大错特错了，”克罗拉点头说道。“我认为人们理解更大的图景，来到这样一个项目，它不会成为梅赛德斯。它不会成为法拉利，那些人已经运营了几十年。但与此同时，仅仅认识到塑造我们自己环境的机会，我认为人们看到了其中的吸引力。”
凯迪拉克已正视其可靠性问题，这是当前需要解决的主要任务。
“从其他组织引进人才的重要部分是认识到他们的优势，认识到他们的经验，并从中汲取这些来创建我们共同的流程。进入赛车队和更广泛业务的其他车队申请者的质量和数量都非常积极。但它需要那种能够迎接挑战的心态。这不会是朝九晚五的巡航。这需要深入挖掘并长期投入。”
凯迪拉克确实一路达到了所有内部和外部的截止日期，开始了冬季测试，并在澳大利亚用其中一辆车完成了首场比赛。但随后在可靠性和运营方面出现的小毛病，以及在车队末尾被阿斯顿·马丁超越，进一步凸显了仅仅亮相只是开始。
“那些都不是容易达到的里程碑。对所有人来说，那真的是血、汗和泪，”克罗拉回忆道。“它真的变成了你的生活。它必须如此，因为你工作时间超长，而且你要求其他人也这样做。我认为没有比这更伟大的运动了，当你真正制造出一辆赛车，然后它第一次绕赛道行驶时，你能看到自己劳动的成果。那可能是在银石一个寒冷下雨的一月下午，但那太棒了。它给了每个人巨大的成就感。
“当然，我们遇到了可靠性问题。我认为这对任何人来说都不意外，但关键在于你如何应对它们，如何解决它们，以及如何从中恢复。对我来说，我们所做的一切都与我的预期相符。我可能预期它会稍微更难一些，也可能预期它有时会更令人失望。奥地利对我们来说可能是一个低谷，但这只是旅程的一部分。如果人们对此感到惊讶，那么我认为这可能是我们经历的一次有益体验。”
随着凯迪拉克进入下一阶段，前雷诺人布德科夫斯基现在掌舵，车队明年将开始使用位于印第安纳州的全新美国总部，克罗拉坚称这将是一个“令人惊叹的运营场所”，同时在未来几个月扩大其位于银石的英国基地。
“开始参赛并不是建设和开发业务的终点。它真的只是那段旅程中的另一个阶段，我认为直到所有这些独立的领域完全运作起来，我们才能真正看到我们在这里所做事情的规模，”他补充道。
“这里有一些非常有才华的人，不是过分自夸，我们在这方面做得很好，但我们才刚刚开始。”
英文原文
"No nine to five cruise" - The challenge of assembling Cadillac's trackside F1 team from scratch
Race team manager Peter Crolla details Cadillac's challenging journey to becoming a respectable Formula 1 team
When brand-new entrant Cadillac started its search for a race team manager, still a full year removed from joining the 2026 Formula 1 grid, it didn't have to look very long, or far, to identify the right target.
Over at Haas, F1's previous start-up team in 2016, long serving team manager Peter Crolla had been looking for a new challenge, and the prospect of another chance to build a team from the ground up was ticking all the right boxes.
Following early conversations with Graeme Lowdon, who was recently replaced by Marcin Budkowski as team principal but had been the driving force behind Cadillac's respectable F1 debut, Crolla embarked on another fresh start building up a trackside team from scratch over a nine-month period.
"I'd been at Haas for over nine years at that point, and I was definitely ready for a change and a new challenge, and I needed something to get my excitement back for the sport," Crolla old Autosport at the recent Belgian Grand Prix, before the team's leadership change.
"I love the element of setting up a team. There's a great deal of pride in that, and everything just aligned at the right time. It's my second new team start, sort of 10 years apart, and it was absolutely brilliant. The momentum, the autonomy and the excitement of doing that is unparalleled.
"That nine-month period was probably the most enjoyable of my career, from starting with an empty building and a plan, and being given that authority to create your vision."
Cadillac race team manager Peter Crolla (right) with former team principal Graeme Lowdon, technical consultant Pat Symonds and Valtteri Bottas
Being a race team manager in a job with an extremely wide and diverse scope, starts with being responsible for the overall organisation of the race team. Once the pre-event logistics are out of the way, the job then shifts into a more sporting oriented role when the on-track action starts, which includes liaising with governing body the FIA and F1 management.
But starting a new team from zero adds a huge foundational layer to that, with Crolla drawing from his experience at Haas to have another go at Cadillac, which is a very rare opportunity in F1 given the scarcity of new entrants.
"The sport was a very different place back then," Crolla said, looking back on helping bring Haas to life. "We were still in the Bernie Ecclestone era. Scale was a big thing, and it was also my first time doing it. It was exciting. I worked with some great people there during that period, and learnt a lot. And I think that set me up well for doing it the second time round."
When asked what his key lessons were from Haas, Crolla replied: "I think the calendar and the requirements on a team have grown over the course of that period, and I wanted to ensure that we approached this as a big team and had everything we needed to accomplish the task well.
"It was, in my opinion, never a case of starting small and then growing. There isn't time for that because once you're out racing, the time you've got to spend on your projects is greatly decreased. So for me, it was about doing everything to the best of our abilities, maximising the budget we had available for it, and just creating a team that was ready to go racing and do a good job of it.
"For me, there were three pillars of how this first year needed to be. It was respectable participation. So, we show up on time, and we do all the right things, keep our heads down. I think we accomplished that. The next pillar was reliability, and for sure we're still working our way through that. And then the third is performance, and we're into that phase as well. So, it's happening as I thought it would. So far so good."
While the factory-based operation in Silverstone was already in place when Crolla joined in April, the trackside team that would travel the world was still a blank sheet of paper. Crolla subsequently sat down with fellow new hires, team logistics manager Pete Simmons and chief mechanic Nathan Divey, to map out the road to Melbourne. That ranged from acquiring the hardware the team needed to setting up procedures and best practices for trackside operations, car builds, pitstops - an endless list of challenges for any outfit, never mind a team of people that had never worked together before.
Crolla previously spent a decade at Haas in a similar role
"We had a collaborative approach and a collective vision of what a good race team in 2026 needed to look like," Crolla explained. "There's no book. There are no guidelines on how to do this, but we worked very hard and there were very few, if any, disagreements on what we wanted to do.
"We just knew that it had to be the best, but most of all, it had to be there. There were no excuses for anything not being there because I think everything is achievable in those nine months, and especially given the autonomy and the budget we had. We had to put a lot of pressure on suppliers, but we worked with good suppliers that we'd worked with before. People that we trusted, and that was really important. Knowing who you can lean on and who you can really push to the limit."
Ultimately, any organisation comes down to the quality of its people, and F1 is no different as Cadillac assembled a team ready to take on the establishment. Given the long gardening leave times involved, that was no easy feat, especially for a team that had no track record yet.
"Recruitment was something that we had to be quite aggressive on because people were already on long notice periods," Crolla pointed out. "Nobody's really available in this sport for any less than three months, and some were on six months' notice.
"A lot of people joined in the second half of 2025, and there was no honeymoon period. They had to get stuck in right away and get on with it all. There was a huge amount of equipment coming through the door every day, and a phenomenal workload. But everybody really rose to the challenge."
But just like how the start-up culture attracted Crolla to the Cadillac story, a lot of other hires from F1's biggest teams appeared to feel the same way. There was certainly no mistake on the challenges the team would face, and that there would be no such thing as an easy ride.
"No, I think that would be quite misguided if you came here from an established team and thought it was just going to be like that," Crolla nodded. "I think people understand the bigger picture that coming to a project like this, it's not going to be a Mercedes. It's not going to be a Ferrari where these guys have been in operation for decades. But at the same time, just recognising the opportunity of sculpting our own environment, I think people saw the attraction in that.
Cadillac has faced up to its reliability woes, which is its current major task to solve
"The important part of bringing people in from other organisations is recognising their strengths, recognising their experience, and drawing that out of them to create our combined processes. The quality and quantity of applicants that came into the race team and the wider business from other teams has been really positive. But it needs that mentality that can rise to the challenge. This is not going to be a nine-to-five cruise. It's digging deep and being in it for the long run."
Cadillac did meet every internal and external deadline along the way, making the start of winter testing and finishing its first race in Australia with one of its cars. But subsequent gremlins on the reliability and operational side, while being overtaken by Aston Martin at the rear of the field, have further underlined that simply showing up was just the start.
"Those were not easy milestones to reach. There was literally blood, sweat, and tears for all of them," Crolla reflected. "It turns into your life, really. It has to, because you're working super long days and you're asking everybody else to do the same. I think there's no greater sport where you're able to see the fruits of your labour when you actually build a car that then goes around the track for the first time. It might have been on a rainy cold afternoon in January in Silverstone, but it was mega. It gave everybody a great feeling of achievement.
"For sure, we've come across reliability matters. I don't think that was a surprise to anybody, but it's about how you approach them, how you tackle them, and how you recover from them. For me, nothing that we've done is out of sync with how I expected it to be. I probably expected it to be a little bit harder, and probably expected it to be a little bit more disappointing at times. Austria was probably a bit of a low point for us, but it's just part of the journey. If people were surprised by it, then I think it's probably a useful experience for us to go through."
As Cadillac transitions into its next phase, with former Renault man Budkowski now at the helm, the team will start using a brand-new US headquarters in Indiana next year that Crolla insists will be an "amazing place to operate from", while also expanding its UK base in Silverstone in the coming months.
"Starting to go racing is not the end point of building and developing the business. It's really just another stage in that journey, and I think it won't be until all these discrete areas are fully operational that we actually see the scale of what we're doing here," he added.
"There's some really talented people here, and without being overly congratulatory on ourselves, we're doing a good job with it, but we're only just getting started."
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