Ambitious Cadillac confirms former Red Bull chief’s arrival

GPblog reported exclusively a few weeks ago that after leaving the Austrian team earlier this year, Skinner would be heading to Cadillac. Alpine also wanted the Brit, but he preferred Formula 1’s newest team.

Craig Skinner spent no less than 20 years at Red Bull Racing, including as Chief Aerodynamicist and, most recently, as Chief Designer. In that latter role, he succeeded Adrian Newey at Max Verstappen’s team. Thanks to cars designed by Skinner, the Dutchman was able to celebrate three individual world titles.

At the start of this calendar year, the collaboration between Skinner and Red Bull came to an abrupt end. It has never been fully disclosed why the two parties split. In any case, Skinner subsequently served a mandatory gardening leave. GPblog recently reported that this had been completed.

Now that it’s over, he can get to work at Cadillac, as confirmed by the team. For Cadillac, this is in any case a huge coup; securing a designer who spent years dominating Formula 1 with Red Bull. Now that the partnership is indeed happening, it once again underlines the American team’s ambition.

Skinner is not the only new arrival. Blandin joins the team with more than 11 years of experience as Chief Aerodynamicist at Mercedes and as Deputy Technical Director at Aston Martin F1. He will lead the team’s aerodynamics department and report to Nick Chester.

Lean brings more than ten years of experience in aerodynamics at McLaren, as well as six years at Red Bull Racing. He also spent more than five years as Principal Aerodynamicist at Ferrari. At the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Lean will lead Aerodynamics Modelling and Simulation, the department responsible for aerodynamic modelling and simulation. He will report to Blandin.

Cadillac's team principal Marcin Budkowski said: “These appointments represent a vital step in the technical evolution of the team. Bringing together experienced leadership across development, aerodynamics and modelling will help us create a stronger integrated technical organisation and improve performance on track.

It’s also an open secret that Cadillac is trying to pry Paul Monaghan away from Red Bull as well, although the Austrians would rather not see their Chief Engineer leave.