Photo: Liauzh, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)
Cadillac’s Formula 1 team announced on August 12 that Marcin Budkowski has taken over as team principal, replacing Graeme Lowdon in the role. The change is effective immediately, with Budkowski set to lead the team on-track for the first time at next weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort.
The Guy Who Built It From Scratch Is Out
Lowdon isn’t some anonymous placeholder who got swept aside for a bigger name. He was the person running this operation before it had a car, a livery, or even full certainty about which manufacturer’s badge would end up on the chassis. General Motors named Lowdon team principal of its Formula 1 project on December 5, 2024, more than a year before the team would actually turn a wheel at a Grand Prix weekend. He guided the operation through hiring, infrastructure, and the technical scramble of joining a grid that, as we detailed in our breakdown of the 2026 rules reset, welcomed Cadillac as the sport’s 11th team and the first completely new entrant since Haas arrived in 2016.
That patience hasn’t yet turned into results. Through the season’s first eleven rounds, Cadillac sits eleventh and last in the constructors’ championship without a point to its name, the only team on the 2026 grid yet to open its account. Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez are both proven race winners on their day, which is what makes a leadership change arriving mid-summer-break, rather than at a natural season boundary, worth a second look.
Cadillac’s own statement described the move as a planned handoff rather than a reaction to results, framing the team’s build-up phase as finished and pointing toward a new stage centered on competitive development. CEO Dan Towriss credited Lowdon with establishing the organization’s foundation and thanked him for his contributions, while stressing that the team’s ambitions go well beyond simply making up the numbers on the grid. What the release didn’t include was any detailed explanation of why a “planned” transition happened to land in the middle of August, eleven races into the only season this team has ever run.
Who Is Marcin Budkowski, and Why Him
Budkowski’s background is an unusual combination for a team boss: aerodynamicist first, regulator second, executive third. He started as an aero engineer at Prost, Ferrari, and McLaren before crossing over to run the FIA’s Formula 1 technical department, the office responsible for interpreting and enforcing the same rulebook every team on the grid has to operate inside. From there he joined Renault as executive director, sharing team principal duties alongside Davide Brivio during the 2021 season as the operation transitioned into what became Alpine, before departing in 2022 and spending the years since consulting and advising across the sport. At 49, he isn’t a fresh face or an outsider — he’s someone who has already seen the cost cap and technical regulations from the inside, which lines up with exactly what Cadillac says it needs right now.
Budkowski pointed straight at his first race weekend in charge, calling it “a privilege to be leading Cadillac Formula 1 Team’s on-track efforts” starting at Zandvoort.
The Cost Cap Is the Real Story Here
Both Towriss and Budkowski leaned on the same phrase: development within the cost cap. That’s not filler corporate language — it’s the actual battlefield for a new team trying to close a gap on the front of the grid. Every dollar Cadillac spends on people, tools, and car parts is capped by the same regulations governing Ferrari and Mercedes, so the only way to climb the order is to spend what’s available more intelligently than everyone else. It’s a different fight than the one currently playing out on the engine side, where we’ve walked through how the sport’s development-token catch-up system actually works. Cadillac isn’t eligible for that mechanism the way an engine manufacturer is, since it currently runs Ferrari power units ahead of a planned switch to a GM-built unit later this decade. Its catch-up has to come from the chassis and operational side of the garage, which is exactly the terrain Budkowski spent two decades learning from multiple angles.
What This Means Heading Into Zandvoort
New teams arriving on an F1 grid tend to go through early leadership churn as launch-year optimism runs into the slower reality of building a genuinely competitive organization. Hiring the right aerodynamicists, standing up simulation tools, and finishing a factory in Indiana are not things that happen on a press release’s timeline. What’s unusual here isn’t that Cadillac made a change; it’s how early in its own history the change arrived, and how directly the language afterward pointed at the cost cap and car performance rather than infrastructure. Zandvoort will be an early tell. If Budkowski’s arrival is followed by changes inside the technical department, that’s a team retooling for a real fight. If it’s the same car with a new name signing off on strategy calls, Graeme Lowdon’s eight-month run as team principal will end up being the more interesting story than anything said about his replacement this week.
About the Author
