Cadillac Sacks Lowdon, Names Budkowski Team Principal

Cadillac has removed Graeme Lowdon as team principal with immediate effect, replacing him with Marcin Budkowski in a move that breaks sharply from Formula 1’s tradition of waiting until season’s end to make leadership changes. Budkowski officially takes charge from the Dutch Grand Prix weekend at Zandvoort onwards, splitting his early days between the team’s UK factory and the paddock to assess both sides of the operation.

The announcement, confirmed by Cadillac Formula 1 CEO Dan Towris, marks the first mid-season team principal change by the sport’s newest American-owned outfit, and comes despite Lowdon holding a valid contract. Towris thanked Lowdon for his role in “building the Cadillac team from the ground up,” crediting him with laying a strong foundation during the team’s build-up phase.

Why Cadillac Made The Change

The decision follows a difficult debut campaign for Cadillac, defined less by a lack of pace and more by a persistent pattern of reliability failures. Sergio Perez suffered a rear suspension failure in Hungary, and the team has recorded multiple pit lane retirements and truncated data-collection sessions across the season.

Crucially, these issues have not been traced back to Cadillac’s Ferrari power unit. Ferrari has supplied the same engine to Haas, Sauber Audi and Cadillac, and the other Ferrari-powered teams have not suffered comparable reliability problems. That points to the fault lines running through Cadillac’s own quality control processes rather than through its engine supplier in Maranello.

Towris acknowledged the scale of the disruption obliquely in his press conference remarks, noting that the team has had to “experience more changes than any other teams on the Formula 1 grid.” He also confirmed that Lowdon’s position had effectively been an interim one from the start, adding that this was simply “the right time and the right place” for a transition.

Who Is Marcin Budkowski?

Budkowski is not a widely recognised name among casual Formula 1 followers, and he lacks the paddock profile of figures like Christian Horner or Toto Wolff. But that appears to be precisely the point of his appointment. Rather than hiring a high-profile political operator for visibility, Cadillac has opted for an engineer with a strong technical and regulatory background.

Of Polish and French heritage, Budkowski’s Formula 1 career spans more than two decades, including spells at Prost, Ferrari and McLaren, plus a technical regulatory role at the FIA. Most recently, he served as executive director at Renault and then Alpine. Towris described Budkowski’s recent time away from the sport as an advantage rather than a gap, saying it gives him the distance to “look at a future vision in Formula 1.”

In his own opening statement, Budkowski framed the coming months as “a phase of great opportunities” for Cadillac, with the priority being to maximise car development within the budget cap while aligning all team functions around competitiveness.

What It Means For Cadillac’s Drivers

Perhaps the most significant consequence of this change extends beyond the team principal role itself. If Cadillac’s ownership is willing to remove a team principal mid-contract over underperformance, no role on the team can be considered fully secure — including the drivers’.

Valtteri Bottas holds a valid Cadillac contract through the 2027 season, but his position is reportedly far from settled. Former Haas boss Gunther Steiner, who worked directly under American ownership at Haas, has suggested that Cadillac’s leadership will not keep an underperforming driver on the grid simply because a contract exists on paper. With Ferrari-powered rival Haas showing what its own drivers can extract from the same power unit, the comparative pressure on Bottas is likely to grow with each race weekend.

Sergio Perez’s position looks somewhat different. Asked directly about Perez’s future in his first press conference, Budkowski gave a carefully non-committal response, stating simply that he could not answer the question yet. For a new team principal on his first day in the job, that reads less as uncertainty and more as a deliberate decision to preserve options. Given Perez’s commercial value to the team, Bottas may find himself in the more vulnerable position of the two heading into the second half of the season.

What To Watch Next

Three developments will indicate how this transition is unfolding. First is the technical response: whether reliability issues persist through Zandvoort and Monza, or whether Budkowski’s engineering background begins to show results on track. Second is the driver conversation — any shift in tone from Budkowski regarding Bottas or Perez over the coming races will signal his intentions more clearly than any official statement. Third is the balance between this season and next; Budkowski has indicated Cadillac is working on both 2026 and 2027 simultaneously, suggesting the team’s recovery is being planned as a medium-term project rather than an instant fix.

Industry watchers will also be paying close attention to the traditional driver-market window between the Italian and Singapore Grands Prix, historically when major seat decisions are announced.

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