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Update, 3pm EDT: This report has been updated to include comments from a media call with Dan Towriss and Marcin Budkowski.

On Wednesday, the Cadillac Formula 1 team confirmed that founding team principal Graeme Lowdon has been replaced by former Renault/Alpine senior figure Marcin Budkowski. The decision is a strong signal that owner Dan Towriss wants faster progress after a difficult opening phase in the team’s first season.

The development was announced on Wednesday through a statement that described it as a “planned leadership transition” as the team “evolves from its initial build phase into the next stage of racing performance.”

Budkowski, who was born in Poland, started his career as an aerodynamicist at Prost before moving on to Ferrari and then McLaren. He later worked at the FIA and then joined the then Renault team as executive technical director. In time, he effectively assumed responsibilities equivalent to those of a team principal, even though he was never officially handed that title. He left the team, by then renamed Alpine, in early 2022. In recent years, he has worked as an F1 pundit for Polish television after an unsuccessful attempt to revive the A1 GP single-seater series.

At its core, this is a familiar pattern seen not only in motorsport but also across the wider business world: the person who successfully handles the challenge of getting an organisation off the ground is not always viewed by those funding it as the right person to lead the next phase. Lowdon did an outstanding job steering Cadillac through the complicated F1 entry process—much as he had done in a similar role with the Manor team that joined the grid in 2010—while also establishing the U.K. base at Silverstone and recruiting hundreds of staff. However, after seeing how the first half of the team’s debut season unfolded, Towriss decided a different direction was needed.

“We’re at this inflection point with the summer break,” Towriss said during a media call after the original announcement. “Cadillac has gone through this initial build phase. We built this team from a standing start, and now as we look at the development phase, there’s a real opportunity here to build something new, which has always been our ambition. And I think the change in leadership here fits that. While it’s a short tenure from our first F1 season, Graeme and I have been building this team for almost four years. It was always the plan to get it to this point, and then hand the baton off to someone else and set things in motion for this next stage of development.”

Towriss presents it as a planned shift, but stepping away from the leadership of the team midway through its debut season was plainly not part of Lowdon’s own timetable. “Graeme and I always talked [about it], that there would be a transition at some point,” Towriss added. “This decision was mine. There’s a very narrow window of opportunity, when you look at what we’re what we’re building, and an opportunity to build something new and innovative—and what I didn’t want to do was build something that’s already been done, something that’s old, and then try to improve it. And so I think that the time for that change came sooner than was expected.”

“I wouldn’t say that it’s the performance or the teething issues over the last few weeks,” he continued. “It’s really about just having a clear vision on what we’re building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that matches the ambitions of ownership.”

It would be easy to assume that Lowdon might have been given at least a year-long honeymoon period to prove himself, with any review perhaps coming over the winter. Towriss rejected that interpretation. “I wouldn’t put a timetable on it; I think it was going to be a wait and see kind of thing,” he said. “But again, I think as we look to the future, and the model with a very strong technical team principal—as you look at Marcin’s background and what he’s accomplished in F1, he certainly fits the bill. But also, combined with very strong leadership; that leadership is important in setting the direction for a winning mindset across the organization, from the garage back to the factory, and building those foundations.”

Although Towriss and Budkowski had been in discussion for some time, the final confirmation of the arrangement appears to have come together very quickly. Budkowski has not yet visited the Silverstone facility, partly because an earlier trip could have tipped off staff and, in turn, the media that a change was underway. When pressed further on Lowdon’s position, Towriss made his stance unmistakably clear.

“Again, it was my decision,” he said. “It wasn’t a mutual decision. The process started a few months ago, really thinking about what the next phase for Cadillac F1 looks like, what’s the right timing, how would that look? And then the capabilities of the various folks out there. And obviously, we were delighted in the conversation with Marcin, and how that relationship evolved.”

“Graeme and I spoke this morning. So I think it is a very recent conversation from that perspective,” Towriss said. “There’s no easy way to make this transition within F1. Can you imagine the press if Marcin was strolling through for a tour of the factory, or we’re having these conversations? It becomes destabilizing at that point—and so it’s important to respect the purview of the leadership that’s in place at that time. And so it does compress the decision making, the timeline, and how these things come together. It makes it feel more abrupt than it would be otherwise. But it’s the nature of F1, and it’s the way it had to happen.”

As Towriss indicated, Formula 1 in recent years has increasingly favoured team principals with technical expertise. Budkowski brings a broad and deep grasp of engineering matters that Lowdon does not possess, and his time within the Renault/Alpine management structure also gave him valuable experience—including in working with a manufacturer and an in-house power unit supplier, which aligns with the direction General Motors is pursuing.

It is also true that, in January 2022, Renault’s senior management decided he was no longer the right fit for that team. He now has another opportunity to show that he can deliver in the role—this time with a team that is new and expanding, rather than one that had once been successful but then declined because of insufficient investment and inadequate backing from its owners.

“It’s not that Dan called me out of the blue and said ‘I want you to be team principal,’” Budkowski said. “We’ve had a number of exchanges with Dan, and I think it was part of a reflection process that he was he was having. But it took a few discussions, obviously, to get to this stage. And I also had a few discussions with people at General Motors, up to the very top, up to [president] Mark Reuss, in the process. It was important if I come back to this kind of leadership role to be in a project that I believe in, and there’s a few aspects to that. But this project is very ambitious. It’s backed by TWG Group, which is extremely involved in motorsport, and General Motors, one of the biggest car companies in the world, with a lot of ambition [and] with funding—which wasn’t always the case in my previous ventures.”