Graeme Lowdon was dismissed as Cadillac’s team principal, partly due to the team’s rate of progress. GPblog analysis if the surprise decision was justified…
Upon Marcin Budkowski’s unveiling as the American squad’s new team principal, CEO Dan Towriss stated that he and Lowdon parted ways as friends and that it had always been the plan for him to be replaced.
Still, this dismissal came earlier than expected, and Towriss gave two key reasons for that. The new team boss needed to provide a clear vision, and it was also about the degree of progress. So the vision was lacking, but so was the development.
Cadillac's progress put under the microscope
To test Towriss’s argument, we dove into the data from the first half of the season. It was expected that Cadillac, as a new Formula 1 team, would enter the sport on the back foot, but has the long-awaited 11th team indeed failed to make any significant steps forward during its first season at the pinnacle of motorsport?
“It's really about just having a clear vision of what we're building in the future, the rate of progress, and making sure that matches the ambitions of ownership."
To find out, we compared the fastest qualifying time and race pace of Cadillac from the first eleven Grands Prix with the pole position and fastest race pace of the day. That comparison yields a time difference and also a relative deficit to the fastest driver.
Cadillac began the 2026 F1 season in Australia with a qualifying time 4.087s slower than George Russell’s pole position. That was a deficit of 5.21 per cent. In the race, the gap was even bigger. Sergio Perez drove an average race pace of 1:27.526, making him 4.511s slower than Kimi Antonelli’s race pace. A relative deficit of 5.43 per cent.
Starting with such a large deficit, there was plenty of ground to make up. With completely new regulations, some progress could reasonably be expected from a team like Cadillac.
In contrast, fellow backmarker Aston Martin made a huge leap with just one update, whereas Cadillac have made several without such an increase in performance.
Qualifying gains hide a worrying Cadillac problem
Cadillac did have a few weekends where things seemed to go a bit better. In qualifying for the Belgian GP, it was only 3.32 per cent off pole position, and the race pace at Silverstone was relatively strong, with a deficit of 3.29 per cent. Still, these are outliers, and there was no consistent overall performance trend, because race pace worsened.
To further illustrate the point, we’ve split the first half of the season into two blocks, looking at rounds 1–6 and then rounds 7–11. Austria is not included because both Cadillacs retired after a few laps due to a brake issue.
That trend analysis shows that Cadillac has come slightly closer to the front over a single lap. Whereas during the first six GPs of 2026, it lagged behind by 4.75 per cent.
In the last five GPs before the summer break, the figure dropped to 4.02 per cent. This is mainly due to stronger qualifying performances in Belgium, Barcelona and Great Britain.
Cadillac's race pace actually went backwards
The race pace, however, tells a different story. While Cadillac was 4.10 per cent off the front in the first six GPs, in the latter part of the first half of the season, that deficit increased to 4.56 per cent.
To make matters worse, the contrast with rivals Aston Martin is stark - Adrian Newey’s team almost halved its deficit with a single update.
Cadillac’s updates seem to have done little to move the team forward, so it’s understandable that ‘The Polish Adrian Newey’ was called upon to replace Lowdon.