(Motorsport-Total.com) – After Cadillac made decisive moves with a surprising change at the team’s helm in the middle of the season, the new boss Marcin Budkowski faces the task of fixing the weaknesses of the new racing team and drastically accelerating the development pace.
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Under the first team boss and co-founder Graeme Lowdon, Cadillac did remarkable work to build an F1 start-up under extremely difficult conditions. Although there were recurring problems in the first races of the team’s history, these are quite to be expected for a new team.
Nevertheless, a certain impatience seemed to set in among the team leadership, so Towriss decided on a drastic step during the summer break: He replaced Lowdon with the 49-year-old Polish engineer Budkowski, who has gathered extensive experience over the past 25 years with giants like Ferrari, McLaren, Renault, and the FIA.
There was broad consensus at Cadillac that certain things behind the scenes needed to be changed and cleaned up. However, a change at the very top by swapping Lowdon for Budkowski came out of the blue.
Bottas surprised but respects the move
While Bottas agrees that “something had to change” in the racing team, he did not expect Lowdon to pay the price for it. The Finn admits to having mixed feelings as he had to first digest the departure of the man who brought him to Cadillac.
“I think such a big change in the middle of the season is always surprising at first,” Bottas says in the Zandvoort paddock. “But Dan then explained all the reasons for this step to me, and I respect that.”
“I believe something had to change. Some of the problems just dragged on for too long,” the Finn says. “But I didn’t quite expect such a radical step. I might have expected changes more in the factory.”
“Of course, it’s extremely unfortunate that it affected Graeme, because first and foremost he is a friend of mine. But I also think he did a great job building the team – I take my hat off to that,” Bottas continues.
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“At the same time, I welcome Marcin. One reason for the change was certainly to have a person with a technical background in this position. He has my full support.”
Perez joins his teammate’s words and honors Lowdon’s merits, but at the same time shows great enthusiasm for working with Budkowski: “I think Graeme, together with GM and Dan, had a huge part in bringing Cadillac to where the team is today. He is part of the history of this racing team, and I wish him all the best for the future.”
“I find it really exciting when a new leader comes in and brings a new perspective,” says the Mexican. “I haven’t spent much time with him yet, but I think it was time for a change. It shows that Cadillac – even though it’s only our first year – wants to push this team forward as quickly as possible. And we hope that under the new leadership we will succeed soon.”
The change at the command post
A team boss change just six months after the team’s first steps shows that Towriss is by no means lacking determination to take personnel consequences to force progress.
But given the complex regulations and tight schedules for designing the 2027 car, Budkowski also has little time to settle in. His first challenge was already apparent on his first day at work: The team moved into its new factory in Silverstone on the same day.
“The factory is fantastic. It’s a new complex that actually only started operation on Monday – exactly on my first day. So it was quite nice because I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t find his desk on day one,” Budkowski jokes.
“That is definitely a huge step forward compared to what the team had to work with until then – which was a temporary solution right on the Silverstone race track site.”
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Budkowski admits that he will need a few more weeks to get a “complete picture” of the team’s processes. While fully acknowledging the “outstanding job” his predecessor did to bring Cadillac respectably onto the grid, he has already identified some major structural weaknesses.
“I am slowly seeing the things we need to tackle massively and prioritize in the next few weeks,” he says. “In the short time they had available, they had to take shortcuts – and some of those are now coming back to bite us a little.”
“The team has gone through an extreme effort, and decisions made under such pressure differ from those in calmer times,” he emphasizes. “If they had three years instead of one year, they would have solved some areas better. But that’s not a criticism, because what they managed to put together in the remaining time – I don’t think many others would have achieved that.”
Homework for 2027 and urgent hotspots
Budkowski is confident that Cadillac can make a noticeable course correction for 2027. Nevertheless, he hopes that some short-term adjustments can already improve the situation this season – especially since Aston Martin’s recent upward trend has pushed the team to the back of the field.
The issue of brake cooling is one of the very obvious short-term priorities. “Yes, there are reliability problems that may not be at the level expected from a Formula 1 team. But some areas are extremely complex – and the brake system is one of them,” Budkowski stresses.
“Mistakes were made in design and material selection that we will fix. It’s an unfortunate chain of events because there isn’t just one source of error, but an interplay of various factors. This is one of those situations: you fix one thing, then something else goes wrong, and you only learn through the process.”
He adds: “One thing that immediately struck me: We have many young, highly intelligent people in the factory. Extremely talented, extremely motivated, but they still lack the experience and breadth in the squad that many other teams have.”
“Teams build collective knowledge over years – sometimes we call that the DNA of the car. It’s the story of a group of people who have been building race cars together for years,” Budkowski says.
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“Something like that does not yet exist in this team. This car was actually the first prototype. This group has now experienced for the first time building a car together, and that will definitely help for next year.”
“So we have learned an extreme amount. A few things we can still tackle this year, but most have to wait for the car next year.”
Since big leaps are only expected for 2027, Bottas hopes the team can at least exploit the easiest potentials by fixing the most painful deficiencies: “We are still losing quite a bit of lap time in terms of quality, precision in setup, and in the manufacturing of parts like diffusers, wings, and bodywork,” he says.
“If we bring more consistency there, we are talking about noticeable time gains on the stopwatch.”
“We have to bring the quality of the car to a level where it looks like an F1 car used by a top F1 team,” he continues. “My view is: Whatever we do now – we must not sacrifice performance for 2027. Because with the new car, we have to make a significantly bigger leap.”
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