cadillac sacked its team boss eleven races in
graeme lowdon built cadillac's F1 team from nothing and was replaced by marcin budkowski in the middle of the summer break. harsh, but very F1.
cadillac has been an F1 team for eleven races, and on wednesday it replaced its team principal. graeme lowdon, the man who built the thing from nothing, is out. marcin budkowski is in, and his first race in charge is the dutch grand prix next weekend.
the official line is that this was “a planned leadership transition” as the team moves out of its build phase. then the CEO, dan towriss, said the quiet part: “it was my decision. it wasn’t a mutual decision.” lowdon was told that morning. planned by one of the two people involved, then.
so what did lowdon do wrong? on results, nothing surprising. cadillac has zero points from eleven rounds and its best finish is P13, valtteri bottas in china. nobody sensible expected a brand new team to score in its first half-season. for a lot of the year it has also been quicker over a lap than my aston martin, which has adrian newey, a works honda engine and exactly one more point.
the problem is the retirements. there have been nine in eleven races, including both cars in austria (neither made it past lap 4) and both cars again in hungary. the brakes keep overheating and the fixes haven’t worked. towriss says the change had nothing to do with reliability. sure.
budkowski is an interesting pick. he’s an engineer who worked for the FIA, then was executive director at renault and alpine until january 2022, and he has spent the years since as a tv pundit in poland. lowdon used to run manor. so cadillac swapped a manor man for an alpine man. if i had to pick a team to borrow management from, alpine would not be first on the list.
is it harsh? yes. is it F1? also yes. my actual problem is the timing. you remove the person who put the whole team together in the middle of the summer break, and you hand the new guy a car with the same brakes, a week before a sprint weekend with one practice session. good luck, marcin.
the fair way to judge a team in year one is whether both cars finish, and by that measure cadillac is failing. that lands on whoever is in charge. but the brakes won’t care whose name is on the office door, and sergio perez and bottas still have to drive the thing.
prediction: both cadillacs see the flag at zandvoort and somebody calls it the budkowski effect. see you next week for the last ever dutch grand prix.