What goes into building a brand-new Formula 1 motorhome?

There are the obvious elements; the car, the factory, the wind tunnel, the simulator.

But an often forgotten, but all-too important element of any F1 team is the motorhome.

A glamorous motorhome in the paddock won’t make your car on-track any faster, but it’s an important factor in the efficient running of the team.

 

The form and functionality of an F1 motorhome

An F1 motorhome has to function to simultaneously serve the needs of the hundreds of members of the team at the track, whether it be the drivers, the engineers, the management or the commercial team who need to entertain partners or high-profile guests.

It’s also ultimately a beacon of your team’s ambitions. It’s why Audi knew it needed a brand-new motorhome for its arrival into F1 in 2026, rather than maintaining the dated motorhome Sauber had kept using since BMW pulled out in 2009.

McLaren also delivered a brand-new motorhome for the 2026 Monaco GP to ensure its off-track facilities matched its on-track prowess.

But building a motorhome from scratch when you’ve never had one before isn’t easy, as F1’s newest team Cadillac, found out.

Especially when, as for Cadillac, the process of securing an entry into F1 wasn’t completed until March 2025. That set a tight timescale to have the 2,300 square foot motorhome ready for Cadillac’s first European race (where teams bring bespoke motorhomes due to the relative ease of logistics) in Monaco on the first weekend of June 2026.

Building an F1 motorhome from the ground up

Raceteq sat down with Cadillac’s team manager, Peter Crolla, to find out how the team managed it.

Crolla joined Cadillac on April 1 last year from Haas (F1’s last new team), having spent his gardening leave period thinking about many of the logistical elements, including the motorhome.

“Everything that you see at a race, be it a flyaway or a European race, didn't exist before April 1 [2025],” Crolla told Raceteq.

"So, when I came on board, it was just no compromise. Everything had to be perfect, but it had to be here by the right time. And that applied to everything we do, really.

"Air freight, we launched six sets of sea freight, which, for our first year, as you can imagine, was quite an undertaking. The race base and then obviously the motorhome.

“There was never really any question about what we had to do, because Formula 1 as a business now has changed a lot and teams are given a fair share whether you've been here 40 years or 40 minutes.

“That's obviously great for the teams, but what it meant was that we were given the same size footprint as every other team, but that also meant that the project was a massive undertaking.

"To develop this and bring it to an operational state in 13 months was quite an undertaking. It was always very civilised, but it had to move at a real pace.

"Everything was just no compromise on that delivery date. It had to be here in Monaco. We arrived here with a little bit of finishing off to do, but I think we arrived here in a pretty good state- and I'm the last person to pat ourselves on the back, but I think we did alright.”

Why the newest motorhome in F1 has impressed rivals

‘Alright’ is something of an understatement given Crolla and Cadillac’s finished product - an impressive three-tiered motorhome that’s immediately one of F1’s most impressive. Raceteq even  heard several remarks from rival teams on how impressed they were with Cadillac’s first effort.

Crolla explained: “What I didn't want to do was have this kind of gentle introduction. We were afforded a good opportunity by Formula 1, in that they gave us a good footprint. I wanted to make the most of that and really set our stall out so that we didn't have to grow in a few years' time.

I wanted to make the most of that and really set our stall out so that we didn't have to grow in a few years' time.

"This is our home, this is our environment for the years to come and I think it was always important that we just maximised that scale from all parts of the business, accommodating team, accommodating partners, accommodating shareholders, and exec groups.

“There's space for everybody here, comfortably.”

Having space for everyone can sound trivial, but having a space where the whole team can eat together at once can be a massive time saver on an F1 weekend.

A space that isn’t big enough and requires rotating shifts of eating can be a block on efficiency, like when engineers are needed for a swift collective debrief.

Team boss Graeme Lowdon said the ground floor has been "specifically designed to cater for every single person in the team all at once, so we can feed everybody and look after everyone in the team in a super-fast time, get everyone back in the garage as quickly as needed”.

The advantage of having a new motorhome

Having the option for everyone to eat together also fits into Cadillac’s ‘one team’ ethos.

“Culture is a massive thing for me, and regardless of who people ultimately work for, whether you're Cadillac F1 team, TWG [the team’s principal partner], General Motors, or one of our contractor groups, we all wear the same uniform, we're all here to ultimately do the same job,” Crolla said.

"I always operate on the 'one team' basis, so when we dine here as a team, we dine in the same I always operate on the 'one team' basis, so when we dine here as a team, we dine in the same room. The kind of open plan seating arrangement allows people to just chop and change and meet new people as well, and spend some time with people that they might not necessarily do so.

“It was important that we had this floor effectively allocated to team accommodation, just so people had a nice environment to operate in, to eat in.

“We spend so long with a crazy workload and sometimes in some quite difficult environments, like here [in Monaco] it's quite close quarters up in that garage, that it's nice to be able to give people the opportunity to come down the motorhome, have a nice meal, sit down in comfortable air-conditioned surroundings and just chill out for a few minutes, and decompress.”

The ‘back-to-front’ challenge posed by Cadillac’s motorhome

Cadillac worked with a Monaco-based interior designer and German motorhome construction partner, Schuler, to try to create a luxury motorhome. Features include a fireplace installation and F1’s first ‘floating staircase’ - a modern design feature where the stairs appear to levitate. Plus, there’s a rooftop terrace with a slatted roof that can provide cover from rain or sun.

It takes 21 trucks to transport the parts of the motorhome around Europe, and construction to set up the motorhome for the first time in Monaco took place on the Friday before the race weekend - it was there that Cadillac encountered a new obstacle…

"Then, we also had to build it from front to back as well, whereas it was always designed to be built from back to front,” Crolla said.

"So, in a conventional paddock, you build it from the fence line to the frontage, whereas here, your frontage is looking out onto the port, so we had to build it the wrong way around, for the first time, when it was brand new.”

Like so much of Cadillac’s F1 journey so far, it’s been working on a highly accelerated timeline, and while it remains to be seen if the on-track team is on the path to success, its hospitality beacon has made a winning debut off it.