Marcin Budkowski

Marcin Budkowski is Team Principal of Cadillac Formula 1 Team and a sought-after speaker who translates elite motorsport leadership into practical business strategy. With over two decades in Formula 1, including senior roles at Ferrari, McLaren, and Alpine, plus leadership of the FIA Technical Department where he championed the life-saving Halo device, he understands how high-performance teams operate under relentless pressure. Now guiding Cadillac through its debut F1 season whilst balancing immediate results with long-term competitive foundations, Marcin equips audiences with actionable insight into decision-making, innovation, team culture, and managing expectations in fast-moving, high-stakes environments.

After more than two decades engineering performance at Ferrari, McLaren and Alpine, Marcin Budkowski took on perhaps his most complex challenge yet: leading Cadillac Formula 1 Team through its debut season and beyond as Team Principal. Appointed in August 2026, he now guides an entirely new organisation through the demands of competing at the highest level of motorsport whilst building the foundations for long-term success. His role requires balancing the immediate pressures of race weekends with the strategic priorities of developing a team capable of challenging the sport's established leaders.

Marcin's career has taken him from aerodynamics to regulation, and from technical leadership to operational command. He began as an aerodynamicist at Prost Grand Prix before contributing to multiple World Championship-winning campaigns at Ferrari under Jean Todt and Ross Brawn. At McLaren, he rose to Head of Aerodynamics in 2012, leading over 100 engineers at the cutting edge of Formula 1 development. In 2014, he joined the FIA as Deputy to Race Director Charlie Whiting and later led the F1 Technical Department, where he played a pivotal role in introducing the Halo device in 2018, a safety innovation that has since transformed driver protection across motorsport. Returning to team leadership, he managed more than 750 staff as Executive Director of Renault Formula 1 and later Team Director of Alpine, where the team secured its first Grand Prix victory in 2021. At Cadillac, he oversees a customer partnership with Ferrari for power units in 2026 and 2027 whilst preparing the team to compete with its own resources in future seasons.

As a speaker, Marcin translates the realities of elite motorsport into practical lessons for business audiences navigating complexity, uncertainty and high-stakes decision-making. He addresses leadership and team culture, innovation under constraint, managing expectations in competitive environments, and balancing short-term performance with long-term ambition. His current experience building Cadillac's competitive foundations whilst delivering results on track offers particularly relevant insight into how organisations succeed when they must perform today whilst investing in tomorrow. Audiences gain actionable understanding of how high-performance teams communicate, adapt and make decisions when every choice carries consequence, leaving with frameworks they can apply immediately in their own fast-moving, pressure-filled environments.