“When I joined Haas, the team had already a few seasons under their belt, so a lot of things were already set in stone,” he says.

“Even when we did simulator development work, a lot of the main base principles of the car were already there.

“It’s different now [at Cadillac] because I’m able to give input on things that you think is small, but it actually makes quite a difference, like: what are the ergonomics of the steering wheel? How are the hand placements, the thumb holes, where are the gear shifts, where are the buttons going to be placed?

“Simon gives his input, sometimes we agree, sometimes we don’t, and the same goes with Valtteri and Checo.

“So even small things, just as how the steering wheel layout is going to be, how your hand placement is, how the throttle and brakes feel, how the pedals are going to feel – that gives me a sense of pride as well, because I’m able to assist in the building of an F1 car from the bottom up.”

For an F1 team with so much to do, once the steering wheel’s in the right place, planning on what to do next is mind-boggling.

As well as developing the car to the new regulations, Fittipaldi has been helping to get the race team up and running – meaning long, long days in the simulator.

“There’s a lot of structure to it,” he says. “The simulator is running five days a week. And if there are race weekends that we’re simulating, we’re basically running almost every day of the week. I’m in it six days this week.

“I’m going to see Checo on the sim today, after this call, see how he’s doing there. I’m in Monday, Wednesday, Thursday for development, then Friday, Saturday, Sunday for the race weekend.

“We have dedicated sim days for different departments of the team. On Monday it was for the aero group, putting in different aero maps for the 2026 regs, trying out different wings on different tracks. Today I’ll be working with the manufacturing department for the seat, trying out different pedal positions, pedal faces, heel rests, on different tracks.”

However, come an actual GP weekend, then Cadillac is playing along back at base to make sure all its systems and processes are up to scratch.

“We’re doing a full race weekend simulation, our last one, as it’s Abu Dhabi [during the actual weekend],” says Fittipaldi. “And when the team does these, they send the race and performance engineers from their base in England – they fly them here to Charlotte.

“We run the race weekend as if the car is running here in Abu Dhabi. We have a garage and engineering room, as if it was in Abu Dhabi. We have that direct communication, face to face with the engineers.

“Everyone is connected on the intercom, so we run it as if it was a race weekend simulation. If during practice, a red flag comes out [in real life], our red flag comes out during our practice too, and then Peter Carol, who’s a team manager, is giving that information to the race engineer, and the race engineer gives that information to me as a driver on the sim.

“In race weekend simulations, there’s a dedicated race driver who’s working directly with the race engineer. Then there’s a simulator driver. The race driver will do a race weekend, in terms of briefings, meetings, the same prep and the same sessions, like FP1, FP2 quali and race etc.

“Straight after the session finishes, the race driver goes up to do a briefing with the engineers, and then the sim driver comes in to the car with the sim engineers to do correlation and set-up work for then the next session. So we’re practicing as if it was real life.”

Fittipaldi says he’s on the sim from six to eight hours a day, with little time to be spared before Melbourne.

However, while the team is trying to plan and work as thoroughly as it can, Fittipaldi says it’s still working in the dark to a certain extent.

“I’m not doing the design or the engineering, but our input is very important to be able to try to help the team go in the right direction,” he says.

“The most difficult thing is not knowing how the 2026 regulations are actually going to be in reality, because you have everything theoretically on simulations on how it’s going to be.

“But until you actually get the car and drive it in real life, and the team does their first test, you won’t actually know how accurate the sim was. We’re looking at sim ‘correlation’ more than laptime.

“The core of the simulation is the tyre model, because you can get everything else correlated very well, suspension, aero, power unit. But what actually connects the car to the asphalt is the tyres. So if everything is correlated well, but your tyre model isn’t good, then your simulator is basically useless.

“GM has been supporting massively with their tyre group. They have a lot of experience with developing the tyre sim model for NASCAR, IndyCar, and I think they’ve been doing a phenomenal job.”

Few drivers have as intimate a knowledge of the 2026 regulations as Fittipaldi, and he gives his impression of what it will be like for the race drivers.

“On the power unit side and the power delivery side, it’s going to be very, very different than what the drivers are currently used to.

“There are some things that are, yeah, quite interesting, in certain situations in race or quali with different strategies in terms of harvesting and deploying [electrical energy].

“I think teams, or at least power unit manufacturers, are going to be make quite a big difference in terms of efficiency. Being able to regenerate the battery and deploy it efficiently is going to be huge for lap time.”

There won’t be much of a Christmas break for Cadillac. As Fittipaldi puts it himself: “There’s a lot of work, but it’s very exciting.”