The Cadillac Formula 1 outfit has hired a new team principal, appointing Marcin Budkowski to the position instead of Graeme Lowdon.

Budkowski, 49, has held a myriad of roles in the world championship over the past 25 years, working as an aerodynamicist at Prost, Ferrari and McLaren before heading the FIA’s F1 technical department.

Following his FIA stint, Budkowski joined the Renault squad as an executive director; he shared the team principal duties in a dual set-up alongside Davide Brivio in the 2021 season before leaving the outfit, and has since engaged in consulting and punditry.

“Cadillac Formula 1 Team has an extraordinary foundation and ambition,” Budkowski said.

“This is a phase of huge opportunity for the team, one that will be defined by a clear objective: maximising car development within the cost cap and turning every team function on to compete.

“That means building an elite organisation with a winning mindset – driven, relentless in the face of setbacks, obsessed with detail and process, and able to execute with precision on race day.

“My focus will be on aligning our people, tools and information flow so the right decisions are made quickly, and the performance of the car improves every time we go racing. It is a privilege to be leading Cadillac Formula 1 Team’s on-track efforts, starting in Zandvoort next weekend.”

Graeme Lowdon, Team Principal of Cadillac F1 Team

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

The French-educated Pole’s mission will be to improve the backmarker’s fortunes as the new team adapts to F1 and settles into new infrastructure currently being finalised in Indiana. Cadillac currently lies last in the constructors’ standings, awaiting its maiden world championship points.

“Marcin’s appointment marks another important step in the continued evolution of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team,” CEO Dan Towriss added.

“From the beginning, our goal has not been simply to participate in Formula 1, but to build a next-generation team capable of competing at the very front.

“As we enter this new era for the Cadillac Formula 1 Team, Marcin brings exceptional F1 experience, technical expertise and strategic leadership that will strengthen our organisation and help us develop the winning mindset, tools and processes required for long-term success.”

Budkowski’s appointment means previous team principal Lowdon, who had been hired in December 2024, will leave the team.

“We’re grateful to Graeme Lowdon for his leadership and the role he played in forming the Cadillac Formula 1 Team from the ground up,” Towriss continued.

“His contributions helped establish a strong foundation in our build-up phase, and we thank him for his commitment and wish him well.”

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The complaints have been rumbling since before the start of the Formula 1 season. Periodically they intensify, especially at so-called ‘energy-starved’ circuits where the ratio of corners to straights, and the type of corners, mitigate against the new-generation cars being able to recharge their batteries through the lap.

A tweak to the regulations implemented ahead of the Miami Grand Prix reduced some of the much-criticised ‘yo-yo racing’ caused by drivers being in different states of charge. But more recently speed differences caused by the power units’ self-learning algorithms reacting to small variations in track conditions and driving technique have caused a great deal of angst.

In Spa, Oscar Piastri described it as a “pretty crap way of going racing”.

But the situation isn’t going to change in the immediate future, even though there are those who argue in favour of the machine-learning tools being banned entirely – usually citing a phrase from F1’s sporting regulations as a mic drop. Section B1.9.1 states: “The driver must drive the car alone and unaided”.

And there is still an argument to state that the best drivers will manage these new challenges, abstruse and bothersome though they may be. That was the perspective of McLaren’s technical director for engineering Neil Houldey in a round-table interview conducted during F1’s summer break.

“Actually the drivers who understand what they need to do, the ones who are switched on, the ones who are the best F1 drivers in the world are the ones who are still going to be the fastest,” he said when asked by Autosport if it’s currently possible to assess driver performance accurately.  

“It may have changed in terms of… It’s not all about top speed, it’s about the thought processes going on in the background that generate that lap time.

“[Spa] is a good example where actually Oscar did get a slightly different deployment schedule, which meant he lost a couple of tenths, but was up with Lando. But I think those things balance out. You still see the difference between the good drivers and the less good drivers in the overall lap time and then in the race as well.

“My answer really would be that it all evens out in the end. That there might be a race or a qualifying session here or there where that disadvantages one driver or the other, but I still think you see the best drivers come out in the best place at the end of the season.”

Defending champion Lando Norris took his first GP win of the year in Hungary

Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images

Fundamentally the limitation of the current ruleset, with its near-50:50 split of electrical deployment to internal combustion power, is the amount of energy the car can store. Since the battery has to be recharged throughout the lap, software intervention is required for safety as well as performance reasons, to taper the electrical deployment rather than have it run out suddenly. 

The machine-learning software also has a performance function in that it forms part of the engineers’ attempts to establish the “optimal lap” – the combinations of harvesting and deployment which gives the fastest lap time. The effect of the Miami rule tweaks, which gave the FIA more leeway to reduce energy harvesting limits, was to trade off peak speeds against a more sustained (if slightly lower) top speed.

But all this requires the driver to be consistent with the control inputs such as throttle position. If they attack a corner too aggressively and scrub off more speed than their team-mate in the same place, for instance, re-accelerating costs electrical power so they are punished by having less available later in the lap.

Houldey views it as a different order of risk and reward than drivers are used to: aggression now carries fewer rewards than a more cerebral and disciplined approach.

“It’s definitely more of a thinking game,” he said. “And there’s definitely a lot more going on for the drivers than there was – even 2022-25 [the ground-effect era] there was a lot happening for the drivers to be doing. But now it’s that extra bit, and you’ve got to get not only your cornering speeds right, but you’ve got to get the way you go about deploying your energy, your throttle position, whatever it might be, absolutely right as well.

“It’s certainly more technically challenging for the engineering team to get the most out of these cars, and it’s more technically challenging for the drivers to get the most out of these cars. And in the end, as always, the best combination of car, driver, engineering team ends up doing the best job.”

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