Marcin Budkowski has been Cadillac’s Team Principal for roughly a week. He has visited the factory once, had two days of what he calls proper work, and is now standing in the Zandvoort paddock preparing to lead his first Formula 1 race weekend. The confidence required for that is either admirable or alarming, depending on how much you trust a man who spent the last few years as a television pundit.
The broader context is already documented. Graeme Lowdon, the man who built Cadillac from nothing and dragged it to the grid in 2026, was removed during the summer break by TWG Motorsports CEO Dan Towriss. If you missed that story, Peter Crolla on the Nine-Month Sprint to Get Cadillac Racing covers the full picture. Lowdon is gone. Budkowski is in. The team’s two drivers, Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, are making the best of it. That part is settled. The interesting question is what Budkowski actually plans to do.
The Wartime Analogy That Actually Makes Sense
Budkowski deserves credit for not waltzing in and immediately trashing his predecessor. His framing of Lowdon’s tenure is generous without being sycophantic, and the analogy he reached for is one of the more honest things you will hear in an F1 paddock this season.
“These guys have gone to war, and the decisions you make in wartime are different to the decisions you make in peacetime. If they had three years instead of one to do it, they would have done it a little bit differently. In some areas, they would have done it better. But it’s not a criticism, because what they’ve done in the time they had, I don’t think there’s a lot of people who could have done that.” – Marcin Budkowski
That is a polished way of saying: there are shortcuts embedded throughout this operation, some of them are already causing problems, and untangling them is now his job. The brake reliability issues he specifically referenced are not a new story inside the Cadillac garage, and framing them as the inevitable consequence of a compressed build schedule is fair. It is also, conveniently, a way of explaining why results have been so limited without pointing fingers at anyone currently employed by the team.
Cadillac sit eleventh in the constructors’ championship with 0 points. In a grid where Kimi Antonelli is pulling away at the top and the midfield is brutally competitive, those results represent survival rather than progress. Budkowski knows this. The question is whether knowing it translates into fixing it.
First Impressions of the Factory
On Monday, Budkowski got his first look at Cadillac’s brand-new Silverstone base, on the very day staff were officially moving in. That is not ideal timing for a new team principal trying to form a measured assessment of an organisation, but he was diplomatic about it.
“I’m impressed having seen where the people were working before, and knowing how tight the deadlines were to build a team from scratch, to design, build, homologate a car in time for testing, and to go testing.” – Marcin Budkowski
He is also being appropriately cautious about making sweeping pronouncements after 48 hours. His stated priority right now is listening, understanding how the team is structured, and identifying which problems need addressing first. Whether that measured approach survives contact with a race weekend remains to be seen. Zandvoort is not an easy circuit to debut on as a team principal, and Cadillac’s car has not shown much appetite for easy weekends.
The Ferrari Partnership and the Engine Question
One of the more substantive topics Budkowski addressed, in comments to select media including RacingNews365, was the team’s ongoing supply arrangement with Ferrari. Cadillac currently runs Ferrari power units, and Budkowski is broadly content with that situation, at least for now.
“We’re happy with the relationship with Ferrari, and the power unit is competitive. I think the relationship is going well. So that’s, for the time being, how we’re set up, and we’re happy with Ferrari as a partner.” – Marcin Budkowski
The phrase “for the time being” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Cadillac’s long-term ambition is to become a manufacturer in its own right, which would mean developing their own engine. That is a legitimate goal for a team backed by General Motors, one of the largest automotive manufacturers on the planet. The complication, as Budkowski acknowledged, is the current uncertainty around future engine regulations, which makes any timeline for that transition genuinely difficult to plan.
His background here is relevant. Budkowski has worked for both customer teams and manufacturer outfits throughout his career, including stints at Prost, Ferrari, McLaren and Alpine. He understands the difference between being supplied and being self-sufficient, and he is under no illusions about which position he is in right now. He plans to meet with Ferrari this weekend regarding the partnership, and separately hopes to speak with senior figures from the sport’s governing bodies to get up to speed on regulatory discussions he has been absent from since leaving Alpine.
A Relationship Worth Protecting
Ferrari’s 2026 power unit has been one of the more competitive packages on the grid, and Cadillac would be unwise to rush away from it before they have anything credible to replace it with. The history of teams that have moved prematurely to in-house engine programmes is not encouraging reading. Budkowski, for all his diplomatic language, appears to understand that the chassis needs sorting before the engine conversation becomes urgent.
Bottas and Perez: Diplomatic, If Not Exactly Enthused
Both drivers have been measured in their public responses to Lowdon’s departure. Bottas, who was signed by Lowdon for the new team’s first year in what was a two-way show of faith, acknowledged it was a personal blow while accepting the commercial logic.
“I think if we just keep everything the same, we’re never going to progress. So we’ve got to change some things. Obviously, it’s a real shame that it was Graeme who got out because, first of all, he’s a friend of mine. But I also think he’s done a great job setting up the team.” – Valtteri Bottas
Perez, for his part, framed it as evidence of Cadillac’s ambition rather than organisational dysfunction, which is a generous reading of events but probably the only sensible one if you still have to turn up to work every day.
“I think it shows that, although it’s only our first year, Cadillac is really willing to move forwards this team as quickly as possible.” – Sergio Perez
Neither driver is scoring the points their careers suggested they once might. That is partly a car problem, partly a circuit problem, and partly the reality of where both men are in their careers. Whether Budkowski can change the first of those factors is the only question that actually matters to them.
The Honest Truth About What Comes Next
Budkowski is walking into a team that has genuine structural problems, limited points, two drivers who are past their peaks, and a factory that was literally still being unpacked when their new boss arrived. The wartime-to-peacetime framing is elegant, but peacetime reconstruction is not a quick process either. It requires money, time, and the patience of an ownership group that has already shown it is willing to make dramatic changes mid-season when it decides things are not moving fast enough.
He has two days of experience and a lot of goodwill from a paddock that broadly respects his engineering background. That goodwill will not last forever. Results, or at least visible progress, will be expected before the season is out. Whether Zandvoort provides either remains to be seen, but Budkowski at least sounds like someone who has thought carefully about what he is taking on, rather than someone who just wanted the title. That is a reasonable starting point. It is only a starting point, though.
