Budkowski reveals he held talks with over half the F1 grid before joining Cadillac

Marcin Budkowski has revealed he held talks with more than half of the Formula 1 grid before accepting the team principal role at Cadillac, the American outfit that surprised the paddock this week by replacing founder Graeme Lowdon mid-season.

Cadillac announced the change on Wednesday during the summer shutdown, with CEO Dan Towriss opting for Budkowski despite the team sitting bottom of the constructors’ championship without a single point from 11 races — a position that had been widely anticipated given the squad’s debut status.

“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,” Budkowski confirmed. “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.”

The 49-year-old Pole cited Cadillac’s financial backing and motorsport-focused leadership as the decisive factors. The team is supported by TWG Group and General Motors, one of the world’s largest automotive manufacturers. “Funding wasn’t always the case in my previous ventures,” he noted pointedly.

Budkowski also highlighted the culture within the organisation as a key draw. “All the people who effectively will be on the board of the team and in the top leadership of the team are motorsport people,” he said. “They live motorsport, they understand motorsport — the conversation is completely different from the get-go.”

His return to a team role ends a four-year absence from the pit wall. Budkowski first entered F1 as an aerodynamicist at Prost in 2001, later spending five years at Ferrari before moving to McLaren. He then joined the FIA as technical and sporting coordinator in 2014, a post he held until 2020 when he crossed back into the commercial side of the sport as executive director at Renault. He shared team principal duties there with Davide Brivio in 2021 before departing the Enstone-based squad in 2022, subsequently working as a television pundit.

Despite Cadillac’s difficult start to life in Formula 1, Budkowski insisted the long-term vision was what ultimately convinced him. “There’s the ambition, there’s the desire to build a strong team and eventually a competitive team — a team that will be able to fight at the front,” he said. “But there’s a real understanding of how challenging it is and of the timelines of the road ahead.”