- Cadillac Sacks Lowdon as Budkowski Takes Charge of F1 Team’s Next Phase
Cadillac has made a surprise mid-season change at the top of its Formula One operation, replacing team principal Graeme Lowdon with former Alpine executive Marcin Budkowski as the American-backed newcomer seeks to move from simply establishing itself on the grid towards building a competitive organisation.
The decision comes just 11 races into Cadillac’s debut Formula One season and only days before racing resumes at Zandvoort, making the timing particularly striking for a team that had always cautioned that its first year would involve a difficult learning process near the back of the field.
Cadillac F1 chief executive Dan Towriss said Lowdon had always been expected eventually to hand responsibility to a different leader for the team’s next stage, but acknowledged that the transition happened earlier than originally anticipated.
“This decision was mine,” Mr Towriss said, arguing that Cadillac has a “very narrow window of opportunity” to build a new organisation rather than recreate conventional structures and attempt to modernise them later.
He insisted that the decision was not principally driven by recent on-track difficulties, saying the larger consideration was whether the pace of development and the team’s long-term vision matched the ambition of its ownership.
Lowdon’s principal achievement was helping take Cadillac from project to functioning Formula One team. Budkowski inherits a different challenge: improving the processes, technical organisation and competitive execution required to move the team up the grid.
The immediate problem is reliability. Cadillac managed only one race in which both cars reached the finish during the seven grands prix immediately preceding the summer break, with overheating brakes emerging as a recurring issue on the MAC-26.
Budkowski has made clear that fixing those failures will be among his first priorities.
“There are also reliability issues that have marred the team in the first part of the season,” he said, acknowledging that some difficulties are understandable for an entirely new organisation learning to work together.
But he warned that the problem must be resolved “very, very urgently”.
The reason goes beyond simply finishing races. Every kilometre completed in Formula One generates information on tyres, aerodynamics, mechanical systems and the effectiveness of upgrades. Persistent reliability failures therefore hurt a young team twice: they cost potential results and deprive engineers of the data required to understand whether new parts actually work.
“There’s no point in developing if you can’t race the parts that you’re bringing,” Budkowski said.
That may become the defining issue in Cadillac’s second half of the season. A new team cannot accelerate development simply by spending more money. Formula One’s cost cap limits expenditure, meaning mistakes carry greater consequences and resources must be allocated carefully.
Budkowski, who previously served as executive director at Alpine and also worked in the FIA’s technical department, said modern Formula One had become exceptionally competitive.
“You have to be the best everywhere, you have to put attention to detail, and in the era of the cost cap, you can’t buy performance anymore and you can’t buy your way out of a mistake either,” he said.
Cadillac’s leadership change therefore appears as much about organisational architecture as immediate performance.
The General Motors-backed project ultimately intends to build its own engine, meaning the organisation is being constructed with ambitions extending well beyond its debut campaign.
Towriss said Cadillac’s goal was to become a winning organisation rather than merely participate in Formula One, while acknowledging that the team remains “far from that” objective.
Another issue surrounding the transition is the future of Sergio Perez. Cadillac deliberately began its Formula One programme with experience, pairing Perez with Valtteri Bottas. Together, the two drivers entered the season with more than 500 Grand Prix starts and 16 victories between them.
Perez has so far performed more strongly than Bottas and has subsequently been linked with possible alternatives for 2027, including Williams should a seat become available.
Towriss, however, expressed strong confidence that the Mexican will remain.
“Checo has been a tremendous asset to the team,” he said. “I’m very confident that Checo is going to remain with Cadillac and we’re not distracted by the Williams rumours for a second.”
Cadillac has also been linked with younger drivers, including Ferrari-backed Brazilian Rafael Camara, but Towriss said there were currently no planned driver changes for 2027.
He did, however, leave some room for uncertainty.
“It’s Formula 1 and things can always change,” he said.
For Cadillac, that reflects the broader tension surrounding the entire project. Experience was essential when the challenge was establishing a completely new team, but over time management will have to decide when to transition from veteran drivers and start integrating younger talent capable of forming part of the organisation’s longer-term future.
The same transition is effectively already occurring in management. Lowdon was instrumental in getting Cadillac onto the Formula One grid. Budkowski is being brought in to help shape what the organisation becomes once simply arriving is no longer considered sufficient.
His experience on both the team and regulatory sides of Formula One could prove particularly relevant as Cadillac tries to influence its long-term competitive environment.
Budkowski argued that although regulations change, the underlying competitive game remains similar: teams must understand not merely the technical rules but how future regulations can be shaped in ways that suit their strengths.
Towriss has also signalled that Cadillac wants to think beyond conventional Formula One structures, pointing to artificial intelligence and broader technological change as forces likely to reshape how teams operate over time.
But those longer-term ambitions will mean little if the cars cannot reliably complete races. That is why Cadillac’s leadership reset ultimately returns to a relatively basic objective.
Before the team can challenge for points consistently, build its own engine or use emerging technology to gain an advantage, it needs mileage, operational discipline and a car capable of surviving a Grand Prix.
The Dutch Grand Prix from August 21 to 23 will mark the resumption of Cadillac’s debut campaign and the beginning of Budkowski’s tenure.
Lowdon succeeded in getting Cadillac into Formula One. Budkowski’s task is considerably harder: turning Formula One’s newest participant into a team capable eventually of competing with organisations that have spent decades learning how to win.
