Marcin Budkowski has revealed why he chose Cadillac for his return to Formula 1 team leadership despite holding discussions with more than half of the grid in recent years. The new Cadillac team principal believes the combination of General Motors’ backing, substantial resources and a leadership structure filled with people who understand motorsport gives the American project the foundations required to climb the Formula 1 order.
Cadillac recently made the surprise decision to replace Graeme Lowdon with Marcin Budkowski at the head of its Formula 1 operation. The American team sits last in the Constructors’ Championship and remains without a point after 11 Grands Prix, but the management change was nevertheless unexpected because the difficulties of its debut season had largely been regarded as natural for a completely new organisation.
CEO Dan Towriss ultimately decided that a change was required, handing responsibility to the 49-year-old Marcin Budkowski, who brings extensive Formula 1 experience to the role. Dan Towriss has already explained the reasoning behind replacing Graeme Lowdon as Cadillac moves from its initial establishment phase towards a greater focus on performance.
Marcin Budkowski’s route back to Formula 1 with Cadillac
Marcin Budkowski began his Formula 1 career in 2001 as an aerodynamicist with Prost Grand Prix. One year later he moved to Ferrari, where he spent five seasons before joining McLaren. In 2014, Marcin Budkowski became the FIA’s technical and sporting coordinator.
In 2020, Marcin Budkowski joined Renault as executive director, before sharing responsibility for the Enstone team with Davide Brivio the following year. He left the organisation in 2022 and subsequently worked as a television analyst while also becoming involved in an attempted revival of A1 GP that never ultimately materialised. Four years later, he has returned to Formula 1 in one of the paddock’s most demanding leadership roles.
Before accepting the Cadillac position, Marcin Budkowski had been in contact with several Formula 1 organisations.
“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,” Marcin Budkowski told Motorsport. “But for me, it was important, if I come back to this kind of leadership role, to be in a project that I believe in.”
Why Marcin Budkowski chose Cadillac over other F1 opportunities
Marcin Budkowski believes Cadillac offers an unusually ambitious combination of motorsport expertise and financial strength. The operation is backed by TWG Group, which is heavily involved across motorsport, as well as General Motors, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers.
For Marcin Budkowski, that financial backing is particularly significant because comparable resources were not always available during some of his previous Formula 1 projects. However, money alone was not what ultimately convinced him to accept the Cadillac position.
“One thing that really made me very confident in joining is that all the people that I talk to, all the people who effectively will be on the board of the team and in the top leadership of the team, are motorsport people. They’re all people who live motorsport, who understand motorsport.”
“I find that very, very refreshing for me, because the conversation is completely different from the get-go.”
Cadillac combines ambition with realistic expectations
Marcin Budkowski has also been encouraged by Cadillac’s ambition to build a strong organisation capable, eventually, of fighting towards the front of the Formula 1 grid. Crucially, he believes that ambition is accompanied by a realistic appreciation of how difficult the journey will be and how much time genuine progress requires.
That understanding matters for a team whose first campaign has inevitably exposed weaknesses. Reliability has been one of the areas requiring attention, with Cadillac’s brake-cooling difficulties becoming an important development challenge during the first half of 2026.
“I think since we started talking with Dan, our visions were very, very similar and the ways we see things developing,” Marcin Budkowski explained.
“I don’t feel there will be a lot of pressure on me and I’m sure there will be expectations and that’s logical and normal in this kind of role, but these expectations are not unreasonable and are not completely removed from the reality of Formula 1.”
“Everybody understands the size of the challenge ahead, but there is the commitment to tackle it and I’m joining this with the same mindset.”
Motorsport-first leadership convinced Budkowski
Beyond Cadillac’s financial and organisational foundations, Marcin Budkowski repeatedly returned to one factor when explaining his decision: the attitude of the people running the project and their shared understanding of motorsport.
“To be honest, that part for me was beyond all the foundations we talked about and the backing and so on. It’s the attitude and the vision and actually being sat and talking to people who live and breathe motorsport and who fundamentally understand motorsport.”
Cadillac’s immediate task remains climbing away from the bottom of the championship, but the organisation is also attempting to build foundations that can support a much more competitive future. Experienced drivers Sergio Pérez and Valtteri Bottas form part of that process, and Cadillac has already moved to dismiss speculation surrounding Sergio Pérez’s future as it looks to maintain stability during the next phase of its development.
For Marcin Budkowski, the attraction of Cadillac is therefore not based on where the team stands today. It is the combination of ambition, substantial backing, realistic expectations and a leadership group that understands the scale of the Formula 1 challenge that convinced him to return to the paddock and take responsibility for moving the American team towards the front.
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