The Cadillac Formula 1 Team entered the sport this year as the first genuinely new constructor in over a decade, built without the shortcut of buying an existing team.
Graeme Lowdon was the man tasked with turning that ambition into hundreds of employees and a functioning operation inside eighteen months.
He has now been replaced.
Marcin Budkowski takes over as Team Principal with immediate effect, a change Cadillac has framed as a planned transition from build phase into performance phase rather than a response to results.
“From the beginning, our goal has not been simply to participate in Formula 1, but to build a next-generation team capable of competing at the very front,” said Dan Towriss, Chief Executive Officer of Cadillac.
“As we enter this new era for the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Marcin brings exceptional F1 experience, technical expertise and strategic leadership that will strengthen our organization and help us develop the winning mindset, tools and processes required for long-term success.”
Towriss was also explicit in crediting Lowdon’s role in getting the team this far.
“We’re grateful to Graeme Lowdon for his leadership and the role he played in forming the Cadillac Formula 1 Team from the ground up,” he said.
“His contributions helped establish a strong foundation in our build-up phase, and we thank him for his commitment and wish him well.”
Lowdon’s task had been unusually difficult even by new-team standards. Unlike Audi, which inherited Sauber’s existing infrastructure, Cadillac started with no factory, no staff and no car.
As we enter this new era for the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Marcin brings exceptional F1 experience, technical expertise and strategic leadership that will strengthen our organization and help us develop the winning mindset.
Dan Towriss
Lowdon’s approach centred on hiring senior figures capable of challenging him directly rather than building a team around agreement, a deliberate structure, focus and energy model he described as central to getting hundreds of new employees moving in the same direction inside such a short timeframe.
Budkowski arrives with more than two decades of experience across the F1 paddock.
His career spans Prost, Ferrari, McLaren, the FIA and Renault and Alpine, where he served as Executive Director overseeing 750 staff before becoming a director of the team, work that included Alpine’s first Grand Prix victory in Hungary in 2021.
He also spent three years at the FIA, latterly as Head of the Formula One Technical Department, giving him direct experience of the regulatory side of the sport during a period that included the introduction of the Halo safety device.
“This is a phase of huge opportunity for the team, one that will be defined by a clear objective: maximizing car development within the cost cap and turning every team function on to compete,” said Budkowski.
“That means building an elite organization with a winning mindset, driven, relentless in the face of setbacks, obsessed with detail and process, and able to execute with precision on race day.”
He takes charge immediately, with Cadillac returning from the summer break at the Heineken Dutch Grand Prix next weekend.
