What we've learned about Cadillac's sudden F1 team boss axing
Formula 1's 2026 summer break delivered its first shock announcement on Wednesday as Cadillac axed its first F1 team principal, Graeme Lowdon, in favour of Marcin Budkowski.
But what prompted the surprise move? Here's what we've learned about the reasons behind the switch, as well as what it means for the rest of 2026.
It wasn't a mutual decision
Some team leadership changes can be the result of the incumbent stepping away, like F1 2026's other team boss change, Jonathan Wheatley, who left his team principal role at Audi for "personal reasons".
But the decision for Lowdon to be removed wasn't a mutual one - and Lowdon was told just hours before a team statement announced the change.
"It was my decision; it wasn't a mutual decision," CEO of Cadillac F1 Dan Towriss explained to the media.
"The process started a few months ago to explore what, really thinking about what the next phase for Cadillac Formula 1 looks like, what's the right timing.
"How would that look and then, the capabilities of the various folks out there and obviously we were delighted in the conversation with Marcin and how that relationship evolved.
"Graeme and I spoke this morning, so I think it is a very recent conversation from that perspective, but there's no easy way to make this transition within Formula 1.
"Can you imagine the press if Marcin's strolling through for a tour of the factory or we're having these conversations? It becomes destabilising at that point and so it's important to respect the purview of the leadership that's in place at that time.
"So it does compress the decision-making, the timeline and how these things come together. It makes it feel more abrupt than it would be otherwise, but it's the nature of Formula 1 and it's the way it had to happen."
Lowdon was never likely to be the long-term Cadillac team principal, given his expertise revolved around starting up a race team and getting it functional, but the news was still a surprise to many inside the Cadillac team.
Wanting to protect against rumours destabilising the team is understandable, but you can't help but wonder: if this was a completely amicable transition of power, then why wasn't Lowdon quoted in the press release?
And given everything he's contributed to getting the team into F1 and to a respectable level, why not allow Lowdon to see out the year in a different management role while Budkowski finds his feet?
Budkowski hasn't been to the factory yet
The abrupt nature of the change is underlined by the fact that Budkowski hasn't visited Cadillac's Silverstone factory yet.
It meant Budkowski had to respond with a lot of "very difficult for me to judge" responses in his first media appearance as Cadillac F1 team principal.
He's had several conversations with Towriss - and leading figures within General Motors, including CEO Mark Ruess - about taking on the role, his first in F1 competition since exiting his executive advisor post at Alpine in 2022.
So that would suggest General Motors has also been sold on what Budkowski can bring to the team and how he can take it beyond where Lowdon could.
"It's not that Dan called me out of the blue and said, 'I want you to be team principal'," Budkowski explained.
"We've had a number of exchanges with Dan and I think he was part of a reflection process that he was having.
"I don't want to put words in his mouth, it took a few discussions to get to this stage. I also had a few discussions with people at General Motors up to the very top, up to Mark Reuss, in the process.
"I've had discussions in the past years with more than half of the teams on the grid and some of them more advanced and some less advanced.
"But for me it was important if I come back to this kind of leadership role to be in a project that I believe in."
What Budkowski's getting out of it
Budkowski's motivations for joining are clear, and you don't have to read too far between the lines to see what's different versus his first leadership position with Renault/Alpine.
Renault hired Budkowski from the FIA in late 2017, where he was signed with the mission of helping to "strengthen Enstone to enable Renault to join the top Formula 1 teams by 2020".
He remained with the team as it transitioned to Alpine in 2021 as its executive director in a somewhat odd management structure, but by January 2022 he was gone, having been unable to achieve that original aim.
Many of Budkowski's fellow ex-Renault/Alpine staff have spoken of Renault's reluctance to invest in its F1 team - something Budkowski has reason to believe will be different with General Motors' Cadillac team.
"[Cadillac is] backed by the TWG Group, which is extremely involved in motorsport, but General Motors is one of the biggest car companies in the world, with a lot of ambition with funding, which wasn't always the case in my previous ventures, if you want," Budkowski said in a likely reference to Renault/Alpine.
"Also, one thing that really made me very confident in joining is that all the people that I talk to and all people who effectively will be on the board of the team and in the top leadership of the team are motorsport people.
"They're all people who live motorsport, who understand motorsport, who've been very exposed to motorsport. That's very refreshing for me because the conversation is completely different from the get-go.
"There's the ambition, there's the desire to build a strong team and eventually a competitive team and a team that will be able to fight at the front, but there's a real understanding of how challenging it is, of the timelines, of the road ahead.
"I'm sure there will be expectations and that's logical and normal in this kind of role, but these expectations are not unreasonable and are not completely removed from the reality of Formula 1."
What he can bring to the table
Budkowski's appointment continues the trend of teams moving towards picking engineers as team leaders - think McLaren's Andrea Stella, with CEO Towriss playing the Zak Brown-type role.
Towriss said he was looking for a "model with a very strong technical team principal and I think as you look at Marcin's background, what he's accomplished in Formula 1, he certainly fits the bill".
Budkowski started his F1 career at Prost, before stints at McLaren, Ferrari, the FIA and Renault/Alpine.
Towriss added: "Also combined with very strong leadership. I think as we're going through the track over a gruelling 24 races this season, leadership is important in setting the direction for a winning mindset across the organisation from the garage back to the factory and building those foundations."
Towriss also did not see Budkowski's four years away from F1 competition - he's been a TV pundit, tried to revive A1GP, and done consultancy work, among other things - as a negative.
"The time that Marcin's had away from F1, I think, provides him with a perspective to look at how Formula 1 has evolved and developed, and look at the resources across General Motors TWG and the like and really look at what a future vision of a Formula 1 team can look like the role of AI and those kinds of things.
"We've only scratched the surface of the toolset that GM has to offer in F1 through Cadillac F1, and so I think there's more work to be done there."
Budkowski also suggested he could add political power to Cadillac's F1 team, given he's seen both sides of the FIA and team competition.
"It's not going to be about this regulation or that regulation; it will be a slightly higher-level view of it is how do we steer the regulations in the future in our favour?" Budkowski explained.
"Because the regulatory process is for the good of the sport, but there's also a lot of self-interest in it, and I've got experience in that from my time at the FIA [so it’s about] building the team really in the long term to be the strongest."
The biggest priority
Cadillac will also hope Budkowski's engineering background will help the team get on top of its Achilles' heel in 2026 so far: the brake issues that explain the majority of Cadillac's nine DNFs this year, despite the team bringing multiple fixes for it.
"In the case of the brake issues, I'm looking at it from the outside, but I'm sure a huge amount of money and resources have been spent on solving this issue at the moment," he said.
"Rightly so, because it's a serious issue, but that time and money is not invested in other aspects of the team, whether it's performance or in the short-term or long-term development of the team.
"So every decision has its consequences, and they're not only short-term consequences but long-term consequences, so I think a big part of the kind of leadership role that I will take from now on, with obviously the rest of the leadership team, is to make sure we make the right decisions in the long and in short term."
But there will have to be a fast-tracked bedding-in process for Budkowski, who will be trackside with Cadillac for the first time at Zandvoort next week. Cadillac's split US-UK organisation is certainly a lot for any employee to get their head around, let alone a new team boss.
Around that busy race schedule and learning about the organisation, Budkowski will also need to get the factory team working as one after what Towriss called "teething issues".
"In new organisations, communication is always going to be a focal point to improve making sure things are organised correctly, aligned correctly and maintaining morale through that building phase,” Towriss said.
"So those are really our issues that are to be expected; they do exist in different degrees, but I think Marcin's technical background does give him a unique perspective.
"Even away from his technical background, I think he does demonstrate he's a strong leader and he's a great communicator.
"That's going to really be an asset as we look to speed up the evolution of what are these early-stage business issues and really start to develop that and get to that next level as an organisation.
"The factory is a focal point, not because it's underperforming, but because it's just to be expected in a new organisation, and it's definitely one of the foundational points here that we're going to be focusing on in the coming months."
