Xavier Marcos Padros
Cadillac Salary
Chief Race Engineer
What Xavi Marcos Earns Leading Cadillac's Race Engineers
At £180k-350k ($239k-464k), Xavier Marcos Padros’s base salary sits in our band for a department head or chief engineer. A bonus of £18k-105k ($24k-139k) would put his year at £198k-455k ($262k-603k).
That band opens where the race engineers’ band ends, because he answers for both cars rather than one. Francesco Nenci, chief race engineer at Haas, is in the same bracket. Cadillac hasn’t disclosed what it pays Charles Leclerc’s former engineer, and the length of his deal isn’t public.
Motorsport pay survey whose chief engineer benchmarks sit behind the department head band shown for Marcos.
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Xavier Marcos Padros's Job Across Both Cadillac Cars
Marcos, known in the paddock as Xavi, leads race engineering across both Cadillacs. He coordinates the programs, setup work and driver preparation for Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas, with a race engineer on each car working under him.
He isn’t Pérez’s personal race engineer, a job that belongs to Carlo Pasetti. What Marcos brings is more than five seasons in that single-car seat with Charles Leclerc at Ferrari. In a July 2026 interview he walked through how tire use and energy management shape qualifying and race plans.
Secondary outline of his career across GP2, HRT, Williams, NASCAR and Ferrari, checked against primary sources.
Interview with Marcos about moving into the chief race engineer job at Cadillac's F1 team.
July 2026 feature where Marcos discusses tire and energy use in qualifying and races.
January 2025 release naming Marcos technical director of Cadillac's V-Series.R sports car program.
Guide to Cadillac's 2026 launch that lists Marcos as chief race engineer rather than a driver's engineer.
Other Trackside Engineering Chiefs and How Marcos Compares
Among F1 race engineers, Marcos belongs with the people who run trackside engineering for a whole team. Matteo Togninalli, head of track engineering at his old team Ferrari, sits on the same £180k-350k ($239k-464k), and so does Karel Loos at Alpine. Bryan Bozzi, now on Leclerc’s Ferrari, is a band lower.
Xavi Marcos's Career in GP2, F1, NASCAR and Sports Cars
Marcos has engineered cars in GP2, F1, NASCAR and sports car racing, and Cadillac first hired him for its endurance program before moving him to Formula 1.
Marcos Between Cadillac's Race Engineers and Its Technical Chiefs
Marcos sits in the middle of Cadillac‘s engineering pay scale. Carlo Pasetti and John Howard, the race engineers in his group, are on £100k-180k ($133k-239k), while chief technical officer Nick Chester sits on £500k-2m ($663k-2.7m). His path from the sports car program also makes him a link between Cadillac’s two racing operations.
Xavi Marcos Questions and Answers
Xavier Marcos Padros heads Cadillac’s race engineering as chief race engineer, and the two engineers on the cars work under him. Carlo Pasetti engineers Sergio Pérez and John Howard engineers Valtteri Bottas, with both pairings confirmed in December 2025 ahead of the team’s first season.
No, Xavi Marcos isn’t Sergio Pérez’s personal race engineer. Carlo Pasetti has that job, having worked with Pérez at Racing Point. Marcos is Cadillac’s chief race engineer, so he’s responsible for race engineering on both cars rather than talking one driver through each session.
At Cadillac, Xavier Marcos Padros coordinates race engineering for both cars as chief race engineer, while a race engineer such as John Howard looks after one car and one driver. Marcos knows the single-car job well, because he did it for Charles Leclerc at Ferrari from 2019 to May 2024.
Xavi Marcos earns £180k-350k ($239k-464k) in base salary on F1 Salaries’ band for Cadillac’s chief race engineer. With a bonus of £18k-105k ($24k-139k), his annual total would reach £198k-455k ($262k-603k). Cadillac hasn’t disclosed his actual pay or contract terms.
Ferrari moved Xavi Marcos off Charles Leclerc’s car in May 2024 and switched him to other work inside the company. He’d left Ferrari by January 2025, when Cadillac Racing made him technical director of its V-Series.R endurance program, and he joined the F1 team late that year.