Cadillac F1 replaces team principal Graeme Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski mid-season
Cadillac's Formula 1 team has replaced team principal Graeme Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski, installing a seasoned engineer-boss to lift a squad that has yet to score a point in its debut season. The move was confirmed on 12 August 2026 via the team's own newsroom (Cadillac F1 Team) and first reported by the BBC (BBC Sport).
Lowdon had been in charge since December 2024, when General Motors named him to lead the Cadillac project into its first season on the grid (Reuters, 5 December 2024). Over three years he built the team from the ground up, shouldering much of the work before Cadillac's entry was officially confirmed following a protracted approval process (BBC Sport). A former chief executive of the Marussia F1 team — the back-of-grid outfit that raced from 2009 to 2016 — Lowdon guided Cadillac through its pre-season preparations, set clear targets for the debut campaign, and managed expectations with what he called "limitless ambition" but limited forecasts (Reuters, 1 July 2025; Reuters, 20 November 2025).
The results, though, have been sparse. After 11 races, drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas have yet to bring home a single championship point (BBC Sport). Sky Sports described the change as a "sudden sacking" of Lowdon (Sky Sports).
In comes Budkowski, 49, whose résumé threads through nearly every corner of the F1 paddock. He ran the FIA's technical department — the governing body's rule-making and policing arm — from 2014 to 2017, then spent five years at Renault's team through its rebranding as Alpine, leaving in 2022 (BBC Sport). Before the FIA, he worked for McLaren, Ferrari and the now-defunct Prost team. At Cadillac he reunites with chief technical officer Nick Chester, another former Renault man (BBC Sport).
Budkowski's stated brief is organisational, not purely technical: aligning the team's people, tools and information flow so decisions arrive quickly and the car gets faster (BBC Sport). The operation he inherits is scattered across three countries. Cadillac currently works out of seven buildings on an industrial park opposite Silverstone circuit in the UK, supplemented by General Motors' technical centre in Michigan and its motorsport headquarters in North Carolina. A new permanent base is planned for Fishers, Indiana, though the UK presence will remain (BBC Sport).
For a brand-new team in the most technically demanding championship in motorsport, eleven pointless races is not unusual — the last entirely new entrant, Haas, scored on its debut in 2016 but went through long barren spells thereafter. The question facing Budkowski is whether a reorganised structure can turn respectable midfield pace into top-ten finishes and the points that come with them. With more than half the season still to run, there is time to find out.
