When a team’s executive director walks up to the microphone at a grand prix and reads an unprompted statement before a single question has been asked, you know something is genuinely on fire behind the scenes. That is precisely what happened at Zandvoort on Thursday, as Cadillac’s Adrian Atkinson stepped forward to tell the paddock, firmly and without being asked, that the team is absolutely not for sale. Nobody had asked. Which is, of course, when you start wondering why they felt the need to say it.
The Statement Nobody Asked For
The context is hard to ignore. Mark Walter, the billionaire CEO of TWG Global and the man whose money ultimately bankrolls the Cadillac F1 project, is currently under investigation by both the US Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission. The probe centres on an alleged fraud and cover-up scheme involving insurance companies he owns, specifically Delaware Life, Clear Spring, and EquiTrust. Investigators are examining a network of undisclosed “self-loans”, estimated at somewhere between 16 billion and 20 billion dollars, funnelled from those insurance businesses into entities linked to Walter himself. The structure allegedly used a labyrinth of intermediary firms and limited liability companies to sidestep regulatory controls. In the United States, intra-company loans are not inherently illegal, but they must be declared to regulators. The allegation is that these were not.
Walter’s recent moves in sport have done nothing to calm the rumour mill. He sold his stake in the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers for a reported 12.5 billion dollars, just 14 months after buying in for 10 billion, with the buyers including Bob Iger and Josh Kushner, the younger brother of Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Reports in the United States have since suggested he is weighing the sale of further assets to generate liquidity, with Chelsea Football Club, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and yes, the Cadillac F1 team all mentioned. Against that backdrop, the unprompted statement reads less like a reassurance and more like damage control.
“TWG is not considering a sale of the Cadillac team or any other part of TWG Motorsport.” – TWG Global statement, read by Adrian Atkinson at the Dutch Grand Prix
Budkowski in the Hot Seat
New team principal Marcin Budkowski, who replaced Graeme Lowdon in a surprise announcement made ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, was asked the obvious follow-up: did he seek any assurances from the owners before signing up? His answer was, to put it charitably, breezy. He said there had been absolutely no discussion about the investigation and expressed zero doubt about the stability of the project. He pointed to the new factory being built in Indiana, his own appointment, and forthcoming key personnel announcements as evidence of ongoing commitment.
“There was absolutely no discussion about that. There is no doubt for me that there’s no influence there. The new factory, my appointment; there’s key personnel that, hopefully, we will be able to announce soon as well. I think it just shows the commitment and the investment behind the project.” – Marcin Budkowski, as reported by The Race
Credit to Budkowski for sounding calm. A man who has just accepted his first team principal role in Formula 1 is hardly going to walk into the Dutch GP paddock and say he is nervous about who owns the project. But the question itself is legitimate, and the answer, for all its confidence, is somewhat circular. Essentially: the fact that they hired me proves there is nothing to worry about. Perhaps. Or perhaps a fraud investigation takes months or years to resolve, and hiring people in the interim is entirely consistent with a business that may yet change hands.
The Ownership Structure Matters
It is worth being precise about who actually owns what here, because the Cadillac name obscures a more complex picture. General Motors provides the badge and the commercial relationship, but it is TWG Motorsport, a subsidiary of TWG Global, that holds the controlling stake in the F1 team. TWG acquired Andretti Global in 2024 from Michael Andretti, which was the critical move that persuaded the FIA, Formula 1 and the existing teams to finally approve the eleventh-team entry for 2026. The IndyCar and Formula E operations run under the same TWG Motorsports umbrella, and it is those entities, not GM, that would be on the table in any theoretical sale.
Importantly, the federal investigations have not resulted in charges, and the intermediary company developing Cadillac’s Indiana headquarters, Bradford Allen, has not been implicated in any wrongdoing. The Cadillac F1 team itself has not been implicated either. That is a meaningful distinction. A criminal investigation into an owner is not the same as an investigation into a team, and it would be unfair to conflate the two. But investors and partners are not always known for making fine legal distinctions when headlines start appearing.
Ferrari PU and the Long Game
Away from the ownership noise, Budkowski used his time at Zandvoort to address the team’s technical relationships, notably with Ferrari, which currently supplies the power unit. He described the relationship as going well and the Ferrari PU as competitive, which is a reasonable assessment given where Ferrari sits in the engine hierarchy this season. The longer-term challenge is more interesting: Cadillac has ambitions to become its own engine supplier, and Budkowski, having worked at Prost, Ferrari, McLaren and Alpine across his career, understands both sides of the manufacturer-customer dynamic.
He was careful not to put a hard timeline on the engine transition, noting that clarity on future regulations is still limited, but he flagged plans to have further discussions this weekend with what he diplomatically called the “higher instances of the sport.” For more on what Budkowski has outlined as his broader priorities for the team, including the factory build and the Ferrari partnership, our earlier piece covers Budkowski’s full vision for Cadillac in detail.
TWG Motorsports CEO Is Not Even Here
One detail that deserves a mention: Dan Towriss, the CEO of TWG Motorsports, is not at Zandvoort this weekend. He is in Washington D.C. for the IndyCar race, which also happens to feature a visit from President Donald Trump. Nobody is suggesting that is significant in itself, but the optics of a team issuing a high-stakes ownership statement while its top executive is absent are, at minimum, a little awkward. The broader 2027 grid picture remains unsettled in multiple places, and the last thing Cadillac needs is uncertainty about whether the money keeping the lights on is stable.
What to Make of All This
The sensible reading is that Cadillac F1 is not about to vanish. The team has infrastructure investment underway, a new team principal in place, and a commercial structure tied to General Motors that would make a chaotic exit very messy for everyone involved. TWG’s denial is probably genuine, even if it is also self-serving.
But “we are not for sale” is a statement every team issues right up until the moment a sale is announced. The federal investigation into Mark Walter is real, the self-liquidation of his Lakers stake is real, and the speculation about his other assets did not emerge from nothing. Cadillac may well survive this entirely intact. The sport will be watching closely to see whether that Indiana factory actually gets built, whether the promised personnel announcements materialise, and whether Budkowski is still in post when the 2027 season comes around. Actions, as ever, will say considerably more than a statement read out at a paddock press call.
