Cadillac fires its own team principal mid-season — and the timing says a lot

A statement that reads more calmly than the decision felt

Cadillac's press release called it a "planned leadership transition" as the team moves from its build phase into a performance phase. The reality, according to multiple paddock reports, was considerably more abrupt. CEO Dan Towriss made the call alone, and Lowdon was reportedly told only that morning, according to the AP news agency. Budkowski's first race in charge will be the Dutch Grand Prix, right as the season resumes from the summer break.

The man who actually built the team

Lowdon's departure carries a particular weight, because he wasn't just running the team, he built it. Team principal since December 2024, the Briton had steered Cadillac from grid approval through to an actual car on track in Australia this year, drawing on experience running the now-defunct Manor outfit — another squad that knew exactly how fragile a small F1 team can be. That history is precisely what makes the timing sting: the person who laid the foundation won't be the one steering what Cadillac itself now calls its next stage.

An engineer with three decades of paddock in his CV

Budkowski is no outsider. He started at Prost in 2001, moved through Ferrari and McLaren's technical departments, spent time as a technical coordinator at the FIA, then became Renault's, later Alpine's, executive director from 2017 to 2022 — a spell that included Esteban Ocon's win at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix. He knows how a mid-grid team functions, and just as importantly, how one is judged from the inside.

The uncomfortable part for him is the calendar: he inherits a team still without a single point after eleven rounds, the only one on the 2026 grid in that position.

What this really says about Cadillac

The more interesting story here isn't Lowdon or Budkowski as individuals, it's what the swap says about how General Motors is prepared to run this project. A new F1 entry is supposed to be judged over several seasons, not one, and Cadillac has spent 2026 insisting it's playing a long game. Moving on from the man who got the team onto the grid, mid-season and without a mutual split, sits awkwardly next to that message.

It doesn't automatically make the decision wrong. Grid entries are hard to win and harder to sustain, and Towriss is betting that Budkowski's technical and political experience matters more right now than Lowdon's start-up know-how. But it does mean Cadillac's second half of the season will be watched for more than lap times: how quickly, and how visibly, does the change actually show up in performance.

A team that spent the year claiming to think long-term just made its biggest decision of the season under short-term pressure. Whether that contradiction matters will depend entirely on what the car does from the Netherlands onward.