Steiner’s telling Cadillac F1 claim amid Graeme Lowdon axe
Graeme Lowdon has been axed as Cadillac team principal
Guenther Steiner said the Cadillac F1 team is “not very good” at present and will have been performing below the company’s expectations.
Steiner’s comments were followed by the news that Graeme Lowdon had been replaced as Cadillac team principal. But, Steiner also stressed the difficulties for a new team coming into Formula 1. He says it is a case of “who the hell do you think you are” when a newcomer enters believing that it can catch the established teams, which all operate at the “top” level.
Guenther Steiner Cadillac F1 verdict in spotlight after Lowdon sack
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Cadillac confirmed the news on Wednesday that Lowdon had been replaced as team principal. Taking over at the helm of Formula 1’s newest team is Marcin Budkowski, the former Alpine F1 executive director making his return to the sport.
Cadillac CEO Dan Towriss confirmed to PlanetF1.com and others that Lowdon’s exit was “my decision. It wasn’t a mutual decision.”
It had been a respectable start to F1 life for Cadillac, though Hungary brought a setback. On top of being re-saddled with the unwanted status of F1 2026’s slowest team, Cadillac also suffered a double DNF with Valtteri Bottas and Sergio Perez retiring from the race through renewed brake issues.
That was despite Bottas saying ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that Cadillac had brought new parts to the Hungaroring to address this issue.
Cadillac is still chasing its first point in Formula 1. Bottas’ P13 in China serves as the American team’s best result so far.
Steiner said that Cadillac, realistically or not, will have been expecting better than this.
Steiner’s comments were potentially telling considering the exit of Lowdon later announced.
“They’re not very good, to say the least. We need to be honest about things,” Steiner said of Cadillac, in typically blunt fashion, while speaking on the Up To Speed podcast.
“I think the expectation from a big company like Cadillac, for sure, it’s better, it’s higher than this.
“F1 is brutal in that way, and F1 has got one thing which a lot of people, having not been there, underestimate: in F1, you cannot come up the ranks like you do in football. You go to the third league, to the second, and then to the first league. No. In F1 you cannot go F3, F2, F1.
“You come in from the side with the best of the best, and it’s not easy and you need to be aware of that, you need to be conscious of that. Who are you going to compete with.
“Sometimes people get dragged away thinking, ‘Oh, I can do better than this.’ But the level in Formula 1, it is very high. They are the best engineers, the best drivers. Everything is on top, and the industry itself is so sophisticated. Just to understand the sophistication, not even replicate it, is difficult. Especially if you haven’t been there.
“It’s easy talking about what you have got. You have got a lot of people around to tell you, ‘Yeah, you can do this because you have this great person with sh*tloads of money.
“You can buy talent, bring it in, but to attract them, it’s not only money. You need a vision.
“I think some of the things they do very nicely, I must admit. But competition-wise, they are not where I think they expected it to be.
“I think they expected, ‘Oh, we’ll start a little bit slower than everybody because we are new, and then we will catch up.’ No, in F1, the opposite is happening.
“You are trying to catch up with people which were ahead of you before, and you are trying to catch up. So who the hell do you think you are?
“These are the best of the best, and all of a sudden you need to catch up, and to catch up you need to be better than them. But if you were as good as they were, why are you not there already with them. It is a very difficult thing to do.
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“But for everybody, for anybody, not only for the Cadillac people. This is not taking it personal against anybody at Cadillac. This is just very difficult. If you get in there, you need to go in there with your eyes wide open.”
Cadillac’s first race with Budkowski at the helm will be the Dutch Grand Prix.
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher and Mat Coch
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