BREAKING, August 12 — Cadillac's debut Formula 1 campaign has had its first major leadership reshuffle. The American outfit has replaced founding team principal Graeme Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski, the former Alpine executive director, handing the reins of its struggling operation to one of the paddock's most experienced engineers just days before racing resumes at Zandvoort. Formula 1 confirmed the move on its official channels, with Budkowski appointed for the remainder of the 2026 season and beyond.
A Mid-Season Change at the Top
The timing is as blunt as the decision. Roughly a week before the season resumes at Zandvoort's Dutch Grand Prix, Cadillac has confirmed that Graeme Lowdon — the man who led the General Motors-backed project from concept to grid — has been replaced by Budkowski. Lowdon built the team from the ground up to get the 11th constructor onto the 2026 grid; Budkowski is now the one tasked with moving it up that grid.
The switch lands in the middle of the summer break, the traditional window for the sort of structural resets that teams prefer to make away from the cameras. Coming mid-season rather than over the winter is itself a statement of intent: Cadillac is not prepared to wait until 2027 to start reshaping its technical direction.
Who Is Marcin Budkowski?
Polish-born Budkowski (born 1977) brings more than two decades of Formula 1 experience — and an unusually rounded one at that. He began his career as an aerodynamicist at Ferrari, before spending around seven years in senior engineering roles at McLaren, departing in 2014.
That year he crossed to the governing body, joining the FIA as deputy to the late F1 Race Director Charlie Whiting and later becoming Head of the F1 Technical Department — a stint that gave him a rare view of the rulebook from the regulator's side. He then moved to Renault, later Alpine, as Executive Director, effectively running day-to-day operations at Enstone — a post in which he oversaw around 750 staff spanning design, engineering, production and logistics — before leaving the team in 2022.
That blend of frontline team leadership, deep technical knowledge and regulatory experience is precisely the profile a brand-new constructor needs, and it is the clearest signal yet of how Cadillac intends to attack its growing pains.
Why Cadillac Moved Now
The decision is dictated by results — or the absence of them. Through the opening 11 rounds of 2026, Cadillac sits 11th and last in the constructors' standings with zero points and a best finish of 13th. The experienced line-up of Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Pérez has simply lacked the machinery to fight for the top ten, and patience on both sides of the garage has been wearing thin.
Pérez's frustration with the team's rate of progress was already a live storyline in the summer driver-market chatter — we tracked how it feeds into a wider 2027 domino in our Sainz–Red Bull, Pérez–Williams breakdown. Bringing in Budkowski now gives a fresh pair of hands the second half of the season, plus a full winter, to reset the technical direction before 2027.
The Job Ahead
Budkowski inherits a team that is, by design, still being built. As a brand-new constructor Cadillac had to scale up at breakneck speed just to make the grid, and the gap to the established midfield — let alone the front-runners — remains large. See just how steep that climb has been on our Cadillac team profile and 2026 season log.
The realistic 2026 target is incremental rather than spectacular: convert the close-but-not-quite P13s and P14s into genuine points battles, tighten up reliability and operational execution, and — above all — set a technical trajectory the whole factory can rally behind. With Zandvoort, Monza and the autumn fly-aways looming, every remaining weekend is effectively an audition for what this team can become under new leadership.
What to Watch
The first benchmark arrives at Zandvoort on August 21–23 — not for results, but for how quickly Budkowski settles into the existing structure and whether any immediate setup or operational gains filter through. The truer measure will be whether the second half brings Cadillac closer to the Q2 battle and, at last, that elusive first world championship point.
Track the constructors' fight on our 2026 championship standings and progression graph, follow the American outfit's season on the Cadillac team page, and browse every 2026 driver profile as the restart approaches.
Reporting: Formula 1 (official), The Race, Associated Press, Dive-Bomb and SB Nation. Career details per Wikipedia, ESPN and London Speaker Bureau. 2026 season data via the Jolpica F1 API.