By the end of the year, Cadillac will increase its workforce to 525 employees.

      On Friday in Qatar Cadillac team principal Graham Loudon spoke about the difficulties of recruiting staff…

      Graham Loudon: “We currently have 500 permanent employees, we’re aiming for 525 by the end of the year, and with those who work with us on individual contracts there will be even more.

      When our application to compete in Formula 1 was approved in March, we had just over 300 employees. We wrote to everyone then. I signed more than 300 letters over two days and I will never forget that.

      People sometimes underestimate how much effort is required to hire staff. It only seems simple when you say you’re hiring a few hundred people. But each vacancy means hundreds of applications, interviews with every candidate. But many found us themselves, although before our application was approved we weren’t allowed to say that we were creating a Formula 1 team.

      You can only use the phrase ‘Formula 1’ if you are already a team, and back then we weren’t. We wrote something like: ‘Does anyone want to join a top motorsport team?’, and people had to work out the rest for themselves. But they put one fact together with another and came to us.

      Now everything is a little easier; all vacancies are listed on our website. We don’t have time to actively poach people. We want to build a team that people will want to join, be proud of, and stay with for a long time.”