Cadillac on the grid - how will it impact the F1 job market?
Cadillac are joining the grid from next season, and they've just announced their first ever set of drivers…
Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez will be known names to F1 fans, with the pair having most recently raced in 2024 for Sauber and Red Bull respectively. Whilst not amongst the best to ever race, they have their fair share of wins and pole positions between them. Plus, they’re both fairly popular characters and are certainly the most high-profile of the options that were available. A very deliberate choice from Cadillac!
Now, I’m not here to talk about how I rate their chances (although I do have my thoughts!), what I’m here to talk about is something a bit closer to home – recruitment. More specifically, how a new team in the paddock might impact the job market for people working in F1.
More jobs
The two driver seats aren’t the only jobs that hit the market when a new team enters the F1 sphere. Cadillac will have had to do a full team build, likely something in the region of 500 new jobs.
Beyond the very literal new jobs at Cadillac, as with anything that shakes up a long-standing setup, this might also make people start thinking about their own next career move. You can typically expect to see moves throughout the industry during times of change, as people start to think about what the future of their career might look like.
This is an interesting dynamic for people working in or wanting to break into F1. People move roles all the time, so in such a competitive field it’s worth keeping your ear to the ground if you’re thinking about making a move.
Skills spread further
One of the big things to note is that Cadillac are a US-based team and are placing quite the emphasis on this in the brand positioning (although not with their drivers…). As part of their agreement to join the competition, Cadillac have agreed to build their own engines in North America by 2030. So, it makes sense for them to fill out a lot of the required headcount with people based over there too.
This is a big deal because currently most of the knowledge of building F1 engines is centred in Europe. This is an interesting dynamic, as there’ll now be a requirement for hiring these skills in North America to a scale in F1 that’s never existed before. We wrote a piece about this earlier this year, which you can read here.
Down the line, this’ll widen the talent pool for other teams who are willing to relocate talent. This could mean increased competition for roles in future as teams will have more pools of candidates to fish from. But we don’t expect this to take full effect for a fair few years – so if you’re thinking about your long-term career, you’ve got plenty of time to upskill or hone your skills in a niche area to give yourself an edge in the market.
Increased competition for talent
The long and the short of it is that more jobs in F1 gives people working in it more choice. But the real benefit is that the increased competition between teams could give candidates some leverage to access more competitive packages.
In times of intense competition for talent, we often see teams being willing to offer higher compensation packages or more lucrative bonuses.
It’s the same story when it comes to retention. When things get competitive, teams are keener than ever to retain their very best people, and some of this is bound to come down to package boosts.
We’ll certainly be interested to see how this plays out if Cadillac’s entry into the grid does create a more competitive environment than the one we already have in F1.
So, there you have it
A brief look ahead to what a new team could do to the job market in F1 in the next few years. Now we’ve just got to wait and see how Cadillac will perform next season and how the other teams are set to react…