Why was Graeme Lowdon removed by Cadillac? Dan Towriss explains shock change

Graeme Lowdon has been removed from his role as Cadillac team boss, Dan Towriss has confirmed, with some clues offered as to why the British engineer has been replaced.

On Wednesday, Cadillac made a shock announcement to confirm that Marcin Budkowski will immediately replace Graeme Lowdon as team principal of the American squad, with the experienced British executive being quickly sidelined after leading the team onto the grid this season.

Dan Towriss explains Graeme Lowdon’s Cadillac departure

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Following on from the shock announcement, Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss held a media session, alongside his new signing Budkowski, in which the pair fielded questions about the nature of the transition, which has seen Lowdon replaced.

While Cadillac’s press release on Thursday revealed that Lowdon had been replaced, with a short message of thanks from Towriss, there was little to indicate the nature of the split, which had come as a surprise given the apparent success of the American squad in reaching the grid with a remarkably solid baseline of performance.

Senior sources suggested the split had been of a planned nature, one of amicability, but the fact that Lowdon had held a mid-season review in Budapest, which included PlanetF1.com, in which he outlined the importance of stability on a longer timeline to build beyond the initial foundations of a team, seemed at odds with this messaging.

Towriss explained on the media call that, while the split may have been planned on his side, Lowdon was not part of this initial decision-making process to find a successor for his own role.

“It was my decision. It wasn’t a mutual decision,” Towriss summed up.

“Really, the process started a few months ago, to explore really thinking about what the next phase for Cadillac Formula 1 looks like.

“What’s the right timing, how would that look? And the capabilities of the various folks out there.

“Obviously, we were delighted in the conversation with Marcin, and how that relationship evolved.

“So Graeme and I spoke this morning. It is a very recent conversation from that perspective, but there’s no easy way to make this transition within Formula 1.

“Can you imagine the press if Marcin is strolling through for a tour of the factory or we’re having these conversations?

“It becomes destabilising at that point, and so it’s important to respect the purview of the leadership that’s in place at that time. So it does compress the decision-making; the timeline, how these things come together, makes it feel more abrupt than it would be otherwise.

“But it’s the nature of Formula 1, and it’s the way it had to happen.”

With Lowdon’s replacement coming as something of a bolt from the blue, given how Cadillac’s maiden season has been one of relative solidity for a brand-new team, Towriss indicated that the point at which the team making its next step was necessary came more quickly than had been anticipated.

“Graeme and I always talked about that there would be a transition at some point,” he said of the timing.

“This decision was mine, and I think there’s a very narrow window of opportunity.

“When you look at what we’re building, an opportunity to build something new and innovative, what I didn’t want to do was build something that’s already been done, something that’s old, and then try to improve it.

“The time for that change came sooner than was expected. But really, I wouldn’t say that it’s the performance or the teething issues over the last few weeks.

“It’s really about just having a clear vision on what we’re building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that that matches the ambitions of ownership.”

Asked by PlanetF1.com whether Lowdon had been aware coming into 2026 that this possibility of hitting a point of transition could be reached in his first season, and whether his role could have been interpreted as interim in nature, Towriss offered a riposte.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say that he was here in an interim capacity,” he said.

“It really is a function of performance and how things evolved, and those are certainly going to be discussions that are going to be kept between Graeme and myself as to where those aligned and where they didn’t align.

“What I can say is what was accomplished; I have immense respect for Graeme, and we have been through a lot over… this wasn’t an interim period for me and for Graeme.

“It’s almost a four-year period of planning and building and doing all the pieces. It was the right time based on the circumstances that exist both within the sport and within the team, and so this is the right time and the right place to make that step going forward.

“Anytime we’re making a transition in Formula 1, as you guys know, it’s very difficult to keep it quiet. There weren’t a myriad of leaks around that. But here we are.”

Alongside the departure of Lowdon, the team’s head of communications, Lucy Genon, has also departed her role, with former Aston Martin head of communications Adrian Atkinson stepping in on an interim basis – his primary role being head of communications for General Motors’ motorsport division.

Why has Graeme Lowdon been removed as Cadillac F1 team principal?

While Cadillac is the only team on the F1 2026 grid without a point to its name, and, following Aston Martin’s apparent step forward in performance in Hungary, is stuck at the back of the grid, it has been a very respectable start to life to F1 for a team with just 11 races to its name.

The pace of the MAC-26 hasn’t been embarrassing, while Lowdon recently explained that his approach has been to maintain an ‘everyday is a schoolday’ mindset during this inaugural season.

While a specific shortcoming on Lowdon’s part wasn’t offered by Towriss, there were hints aplenty through the media session, which appeared to point towards the ongoing technical issues that have plagued Cadillac through the first half of the season as being of greater concern to the team’s leadership.

Reliability issues, such as those regularly affecting the brakes and even causing fires, weren’t uncommon, such as what happened to Valtteri Bottas a fortnight ago in Hungary, while suspension issues also caused retirements, particularly for Sergio Perez.

Both drivers had voiced frustrations over the ongoing issues, which, from an external standpoint, were the only obvious flies in the ointment for what was otherwise apparently a solid baseline of effort.

Certainly, Budkowski’s comments on his areas of priority suggested this area is the shortcoming that he, as a technically-minded engineer and former technical director, can possibly resolve faster than a more business-oriented leader such as Lowdon.

“There have been reliability issues that have marred the team in the first part of the season,” he said.

“In some part, it’s understandable. It’s a new team. It’s a new group of people. They are learning together, and they are failing together. Failure is a part of learning in Formula 1. It’s not pleasant, but these things have clearly prevented the team from understanding more, because mileage, at the end of the day during a race, it’s all data that you accumulate, it’s all understanding of the car, and I think that needs to be fixed very, very urgently.

“I’m sure there is determination in the team to do that, but there will be a strong focus on sorting the issues we are having at the moment, because otherwise there’s no point developing if you can’t race the parts that you bring in.”

Added to that was the implication that the ongoing reliability issues were creating an air of disharmony within the ranks of the team, which Budkowski is eager to head off.

“My first priority is going to be to listen, honestly, listen and observe in the factory because I need to meet the people,” he said, ahead of his first planned visit to Cadillac’s Silverstone base on Monday.

“I need to understand how they work, how they work together, how the various individuals and departments first work together. But also, throughout my F1 experience, I know that when a team is suffering reliability issues, as Cadillac had during the first half of the season, it’s a huge risk of creating a disconnect between the trackside operations and the factory, and that needs to be very, very strong in any Formula 1 team.

“That link needs to be very, very strong, so that’s why I will share my first week between the factory and the track in Zandvoort because I want to see both sides of the team and how they work together.

“I think that’s going to be the short-term priority: listen, observe, and make sure the two entities, if you want… I mean, it’s one team, one entity, but, effectively, in today’s world with 24 races, the people from the factory and the people from the track don’t see each other very often, and that’s often an issue.

“When we had 16 races in F1, and we had much smaller teams, then people would spend a lot of time together at the factory. That’s not the case anymore, and I think that that connection is very, very important, especially in the short term, in the races we still have to compete in this year, and there are quite a few.

“It’s going to look in depth at the organisation, at the processes, at our tools, what we have, what we’re still building, what we need, and what General Motors has to offer because there’s a huge depth of technical expertise and tools there that doesn’t feel like it’s been completely used yet.

“Understandably, we’re talking about a team that had a few months to be built from the ground up and put a race car together and go racing with it.”

The attraction of signing Budkowski is understandable: his most recent roles saw him act as executive director of Renault, where he had also served as technical drector, easing its transition into its current Alpine iteration.

Prior to that, he headed up F1’s technical department, as well as a stint with the FIA as technical and sporting coordinator. Before that, he worked in lead aerodynamicist roles at McLaren, as well as at Ferrari between 2002 and ’07.

Asked about where the timeline of identifying the succession plan for a post-Lowdon team had begun, Towriss offered more hints that he feels the Polish engineer may be a better fit for the role.

“I wouldn’t put a timetable on it. I think it was going to be a wait-and-see kind of thing,” he said.

“But I think, as we look to the future, I think a model with a very strong technical team principal… look at Marcin’s background, what he’s accomplished in Formula 1, he certainly fits the bill.

“But, also, combined with very strong leadership, I think as we’re going through the track over a gruelling 24 races, or however many races we’re getting in this season, that leadership is important in setting the direction for a winning mindset.

“Across the organisation, from the garage back to the factory, and building those foundations.

“I think the time that Marcin had away from Formula 1 provides him a perspective to look at how Formula 1 has evolved and developed. Look at the resources across General Motors, TWG, and the like, and really look at what a future vision of a Formula 1 team can look like. The role of AI and those kinds of things.

“I think we’ve only scratched the surface of the toolset that GM has to offer in Formula 1, through Cadillac, and so I think there’s more work to be done there.

“Bringing all of that, harnessing all of those changes together, I think, are really going to set us on a different trajectory to build that long-term organisation.

As for Budkowski himself, he explained that his contact with Towriss began some time ago, rather than being a shock phone call coinciding with the decision to oust Lowdon.

“It’s not that Dan called me out of the blue and said, ‘I want you to be team principal’,” he said.

“We’ve had a number of exchanges with Dan, and I think it was part of a reflection process that he was having.

“I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but it took a few discussions, obviously, to get to this stage, and I also had a few discussions with people at General Motors up to the very top, up to Mark Reuss, the chairman of General Motors, in the process.

“From my side, I must say that I’ve had discussions. I’ve had discussions in the past years with more than half of the teams on the grid; some of them more advanced and some less advanced, but for me it was important.

“If I come back to this leadership role, to be in a project that I believe in, there are a few aspects to that. But this project is very ambitious. It’s backed by the TWG Group, which is extremely involved in motorsport, but General Motors is one of the biggest car companies in the world with a lot of ambition, with funding, which wasn’t always the case in my previous ventures.”

With the need to improve reliability and, hand-in-hand with that, the mileage accumulation for a new team, Towriss outlined the immediate priorities for Cadillac as the mindset starts to shift to 2027.

“[On] performance, really just continuing to enhance the team that we have, and every race, every weekend, things get tighter,” he said.

“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.

“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, and 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. All the things we’ve talked about, I think there’s an opportunity to bring all those things together and to raise the bar through the remaining half of ’26, through the back half of the season, which we hope will be a real springboard for us going into ’27.”

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