Graeme Lowdon is out at Cadillac, Marcin Budkowski is in as the new team principal - a piece of news that caught everyone off-guard in the middle of Formula 1's summer break - and it wasn't a mutual decision either.

This is all part of Cadillac's planned leadership evolution, according to team CEO Dan Towriss, but was it the right call, at the right time, by F1's newest team?

Our experts have their say.

Hints at trouble behind the scenes

There was always going to be a leadership transition at Cadillac, as I always had the impression that Lowdon was the start-up phase team principal. However, what has surprised me is the timing and how inelegantly this has played out. And that would indicate all is not well. 

The fact that Lowdon was told by Towriss that he was out on the morning of the announcement, and the fact that he appears no longer to be involved at all, is indicative of that.

So, too, is the fact that Lowdon wasn't part of the online press conference in which Budkowski was presented, with Towriss admitting it was not a "mutual decision".

Budkowski hadn't even had the chance to visit the factory when the appointment was made. None of this is indicative of a well-handled passing over of the baton. 

That's neither Budkowski's fault, nor a comment on his suitability for the job given he has a good CV, but it does suggest that there are fundamental disagreements about the direction of the Cadillac team.

Lowdon has done a phenomenal job not only to see this team through the troubled application process, but also deliver a level of performance on track that redefines what's possible for a new team that doesn't follow the Haas technical partnership model by relying on the maximum level of parts supplied by a partner team.

Lowdon is one of those people in F1 who it's easy to underestimate because he's kept a low profile, but before Cadillac he'd been involved in far more behind the scenes over the years than just the team that came into F1 as Virgin in 2010.

That knowledge and skillset when it came to playing the politics and strategically building up a team that is still only in its prototype phase has been crucial to getting the team off the ground and able to perform so competitively.

That's what's concerning about the process. Were this announced in a more controlled way, presented as a well-executed strategic decision with Lowdon on board, then it would be a positive sign. The way it has played out suggests that all might not be well behind the scenes. - Edd Straw

Budkowski's F1 CV is a clear upgrade

Tough, ruthless, this decision is certainly both of these things. But that's F1: you've got to take your chances and target relentless progression. There's not really any room for sentiment when you're trying to fast-track your way up the grid.

Lowdon did sterling work building the Cadillac team from scratch, but what next? Any way you slice it, Budkowski and the F1 CV he brings with him is an upgrade on Lowdon's.

Reading Towriss's explanation, you get the sense he wanted someone in place with broader F1 experience, more technical experience, and more of a hard edge in terms of leadership style. He used phrases such as "very strong technical team principal" and "very strong leadership", setting the direction for "a winning mindset across the organisation".

Budkowski has come from multiple winning F1 teams - Ferrari and McLaren in the distant past - and most recently has experience of de facto leading a proper works F1 operation in Alpine, whereas Lowdon's experience more closely aligns with back-of-the-grid startups and driver management.

You get the sense also that Towriss feels Cadillac is on the back foot in terms of understanding the F1 regulatory landscape and how to best utilise its resources under the budget cap, saying "we've only scratched the surface of the toolset GM has to offer".

Budkowski has a useful FIA background, and crucially brings experience of running Alpine's F1 team under the first year of the budget cap in 2021. I think this, as well as his more varied and successful CV in F1, is probably the key driver in Cadillac's decision. - Ben Anderson

Refreshing honesty in Cadillac's explanation

I used to struggle to put my finger on why, but I always had a suspicion that Lowdon might not be the long-term leader for Cadillac's F1 effort. He even suggested as much in Monaco earlier this year when he referred to his skillset being "incredibly narrow".

He effectively described himself as the ideal person to set a team up because of his prior experience with the cash-strapped Virgin/Marussia/Manor entity, and explained how that meant he wasn't "daunted by certain aspects of what you need to do". Then he went on to say "other people had experience of leading teams that are repeatedly winning world championships". 

Cadillac is a long way off needing a team boss with title-winning experience, but you can see the logic that now the dirty work has been done to make the team a reality and give it a very credible start in F1, the leadership group above Lowdon believes it's time to move on from the guy who was ideal for the start-up phase. 

It's a shame for Lowdon that he won't get to grow and move up the grid with Cadillac to broaden his self-described "incredibly narrow skillset". And it's fair to question if Budkowski is the right man to lead the next chapter.

But I understand why the change is being made. And I respect the team for being up front about the fact that it was always the plan to do something like this, and admitting that it "wasn't mutual". That kind of honesty is rare in F1! - Glenn Freeman

Lowdon was a strange choice in the first place

I never understood Lowdon's appointment in the first place. Sure, he had experience with smaller teams, but not in the cost cap era, and he'd been out of F1 for nearly 10 years. That might not be long in some sports but it's centuries in F1's equivalent definition of time and space. 

And if it was "always the plan" to hand the team over, what was the point in installing him there in the first place?

Cadillac would probably say he was key to building the team from the ground up, and I'd agree. But why did that have to be as team principal when someone like Budkowski with more relevant recent and technical knowledge could have been steering the day to day to free up Lowdon for things like staffing and logistics?

Senior advisor? Managing director? Chief consultant? All of these roles would have made sense, but not the team principal role given how much F1 changed in the period he was out. 

And surely, if an engineering brain in charge is what they wanted as has become quite common in F1 and motorsport, surely the time to benefit from that would be in a long lead up to a new rules package? Maybe Budkowski could have foreseen some of Cadillac's issues or identified the weaknesses that led to them. 

Lowdon speaks well and would have value for any team. But the timing and the role were never suited, backed up by the fact Cadillac was always going to move on from him and had decided that from the beginning. - Jack Benyon

Uninspiring - from a team with wider problems

The best boss I ever had used to decry our company's internal promotion approach by saying people would be selected on the basis of the recruiting manager or HR 'looking out the window and seeing who walks past first'. 

I sort of felt like that when I heard Lowdon was appointed team principal at Cadillac. It was an obvious if uninspired choice. Budkowski's announcement feels similar.

All the other teams are moving towards a team principal with a technical background, not a business or a generalist motorsport one as used to be the case. So Dan Towriss plays the Zak Brown role and Budkowski is his Andrea Stella.

Budkowski has a technical background, some senior F1 management experience, and was literally outside of the Cadillac motorhome window performing his role as a pundit for Polish TV. 

But most importantly why now? It's only usually in retrospect we find out if two things that happen at a similar moment are coincidence, correlation or causation. 

This week, Mark Walter, the main man behind the funding of Cadillac F1 via his TWG Global organisation, has unexpectedly agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5billion, just a year after acquiring the franchise. 

The Financial Times reports that this sale is to raise liquidity amid federal scrutiny of Walter's wider business empire. 

Even if the changing of Cadillac's F1 boss and the ongoing financial scrutiny surrounding TWG are indeed only coincidence, both will provide plenty of intrigue and storylines in the coming months. - Darren Cox