What’s going on at Cadillac and Haas? F1 Q&AImage source, ReutersImage caption, Cadillac are the only team yet to score a point this seasonPublished31 minutes agoAfter a four-week summer break, Formula 1 returns with the Dutch Grand Prix this weekend.Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli has a 50-point lead in the drivers’ championship going into the race at Zandvoort.There are 12 races remaining on the 2026 schedule, though uncertainty remains over whether Qatar and Abu Dhabi will go ahead because of the conflict in the Middle East.Before the season resumes, our F1 correspondent Andrew Benson answers your newest questions.Is the Cadillac reorganisation too hasty? Surely the team would have been better served by evaluating at the end of the debut season? – TimCadillac chief executive officer Dan Towriss made it clear last week that he had always envisaged there would be a time when Graeme Lowdon would be replaced as team principal. But he mentioned that time had come “sooner than expected”.
Lowdon and Towriss have worked together to set up Cadillac over the past four years in quite demanding circumstances.
These included the fact Cadillac did not have an official entry until March 2025, only a year before their first race.
Towriss paid tribute to Lowdon’s efforts in building a team from scratch while not knowing until the 11th hour when or even whether they would be racing.
But it’s clear the American businessman was not happy with what he saw in the first 11 races of Cadillac’s life as a competitive entrant. Hence his decision to sack Lowdon and replace him with the highly experienced Marcin Budkowski.
Lowdon was careful to manage expectations as to what could be expected of Cadillac in their first seasons. But it seems there has been a disconnect between what he believed was possible in a given timeframe and what Towriss expected.
The brutal realities of Cadillac’s performance are that – if one leaves aside the catastrophe that was Aston Martin for the first 10 races – Cadillac were on average 1.2 seconds off the next slowest team, Williams, who are themselves having a bit of a nightmare season and lag 0.4secs behind the next slowest team, Haas.
And now Aston Martin have introduced their major upgrade, Cadillac face the prospect of spending the rest of the season well adrift of the rest of the field.
On top of that, there have been serious, and repeating, reliability problems, most notably with overheating brakes. It has become a familiar sight to see a Cadillac stopping with its brakes on fire – and quite often early in a race or session.
Towriss was questioned about “blame culture and people forming silos”. And he admitted these were both a problem, describing them as “early stage business issues”.
He has concluded Cadillac need what he described as “a model with a very strong technical team principal”.
That is the model pursued with such success in the past three years by McLaren with Andrea Stella, and now Red Bull with Laurent Mekies.
Towriss mentioned the decision was less based on the reliability issues and more “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”.
