New Cadillac boss given four immediate priorities as ‘major obstacle’ targeted

TWG Motorsports CEO Dan Towriss has outlined four priorities for Cadillac’s second half of the F1 2026 season as Marcin Budkowski takes over as team principal.

Towriss wants Cadillac’s reliability, performance, team culture and process organisation to be addressed, with Budkowski himself vowing to “sort out the reliability issues as quickly as possible.”

Cadillac boss lays out four priorities as new team principal arrives

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Towriss confirmed it was his decision alone to part ways with former team boss Graeme Lowdon last week, with the team still establishing itself in its first Formula 1 season.

Cadillac has fought largely at the back of the field in its time in Formula 1 so far, becoming the first all-new team to have arrived on the grid since Haas a decade ago.

While the team has one of the most experienced combined driver pairings on the grid in Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez, they have suffered nine DNFs between them in the first half of the season – second only to Aston Martin in number of retirements so far in F1 2026.

Budkowski himself said that he wants to get to grips with the MAC-26’s underlying problems, saying he wants to “sort out the reliability issues as quickly as possible because they’re a major obstacle to learning. There’s no point going to a race to not to participate in it.”

On the performance front, he added: “I’m not going to set any objectives in terms of points or Q2s, etc.

“We’re going to push very hard to squeeze every bit of performance, every thousandth of a second we have, and then the circumstances and our expert drivers will have to deliver the last bit.”

Towriss outlined those priorities, along with how the team can improve from within at Cadillac – all of which form a path further up the grid in future.

“I think it’s reliability, performance, kind of process organisation and culture,” Towriss told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets when asked what his immediate priorities are.

“So the reliability piece, I think Marcin has spoken to quite a bit. Performance, really just continuing to enhance the team that we have, and every race, every weekend, things get tighter. The garage continues to operate at a higher level.

“The connectivity to the factory gets better, and so as we continue to improve that, just that improvement alone will lead to performance gains, and so that’s a real focus over the remainder of ’26.

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“We do have additional upgrades that we’re looking at to bring to the track as well that won’t distract from the ’27 priorities, and then a lot of the process and organisation things at the factory, that’ll continue to be a focus over the remaining half of ’26.

“Then with leadership changes, as well as the evolution of this team, it’s going to be about culture.

“That’s communication, that’s leadership, it’s accountability.

“I think there’s an opportunity to bring all those things together and to raise the bar, building momentum through the remaining half of ’26, in the back half of the season, which we hope will be a real springboard for us going into ’27 – so those would be the priorities that I would lay out.”

Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher

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