Cadillac F1 fired Graeme Lowdon as team principal in a move that shocked the F1 world, especially after all the work he did to build Cadillac.
Lowdon was the team’s first executive to join, and he had the tough task of assembling an F1 team on the fly, with people at multiple different levels.
He hired everyone and made sure the infrastructure was in place with experienced people.
However, Cadillac went with former Renault executive director and FIA technical chief Marcin Budkowski to lead the team going forward.
Graeme Lowdon | Photo Credit: Cadillac F1 TeamThe team wanted to hire someone with more technical knowledge and experience to help develop the car.
Cadillac has done great work overall to catch up to teams with years of experience, but a notable deficit remains, and the team chose to close the gap.
Former F1 personality Will Buxton, on the Up To Speed podcast alongside former driver David Coulthard and Sky Sports analyst Naomi Schiff, made sure to give Lowdon credit for such a quick build at Cadillac.
“I think they probably brought Graeme in to be the team principal in the building phase because he had that experience. He had that knowledge from when he was with Manor/Marussia, whichever name you want to give it,” Buxton said.
“So he knew what it took to build up a team from nothing. And he did that fantastically. I think it’s safe to say Cadillac wouldn’t be on the grid without Graeme, without his experience and without the work that he did to build that team up to put the people in place and get them on the grid.
“He himself, though, admitted not long ago that he believed he had quite a narrow window of expertise, and I don’t know if that’s a discussion that he’d had with the team or that the team had maybe had with him, but there was certainly a realisation there on his part that he probably wasn’t going to be the long-term option there.”
In the end, if Budkowski helps the car get into a good spot, the team will be better off, and it may have been a tough but necessary move.
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