Prime Tire Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s F1 newsletter. Sign up here to receive Prime Tire directly in your inbox twice a week during the season and weekly in the offseason.Welcome back to Prime Tire, where today I was thinking about a classic Formula 1 question: What is Red Bull going to do with its driver lineup?It comes around summer every year, and this year is no different. Except today, my thoughts are on Red Bull’s junior team, Racing Bulls.And right before I was ready to submit this newsletter, the shocking news came that Cadillac fired its team principal after just 11 races. So we’ll start there.I’m Alex, and with the F1 summer break still in full swing, it’s once again just me in your inbox.Cadillac Change: Lowdon axed as team principalThe email subject “Cadillac Formula 1®®®® Team appoints Marcin Budkowski as new Team Principal” rather changed the course of my afternoon.Mainly because the claim that Graeme Lowdon was suddenly replaced by Budkowski after “a planned leadership transition as the organization evolves from its initial build phase into the next stage of racing performance” just made me so annoyed.Lowdon was fired. And Budkowski — who rather tipped his hand when he said he was yet to visit the Cadillac base at Silverstone in the United Kingdom — was suddenly named his replacement. Hardly an orderly, long-planned transition.Dan Towriss, Cadillac team CEO (and CEO of the motorsport division of majority team owner TWG Global) later told reporters that “Graeme and I always talked about that there would be a transition at some point.”But he also said “this decision was mine” and “it wasn’t a mutual decision” with Lowdon, who has yet to comment publicly on the matter.No wonder Towriss “wouldn’t put a timetable” on the length of the “planned leadership transition” when asked about it in the media roundtable Teams call with Budkowski, which followed Towriss informing Lowdon of his exit only this morning.This all made me think of Christian Horner (don’t worry, I have a point). Not about Horner’s own sudden axing as Red Bull team boss in July 2025, but how, when he first arrived at that team, his own appointment was so sudden a half-drunk coffee from his predecessor remained on his new office desk.So often, sporting decisions are fast and brutal. I think it would have been better for Cadillac to have been clearer on that from the off. At least Towriss didn’t completely brush off questions about it.But questions are going to keep coming. Especially as Towriss confirmed the team has “issues” with communications and a silo culture at the team’s Silverstone base. That’s in addition to its place in the back of the F1 pack and its cars regularly catching fire.And, above Cadillac, TWG’s founder Mark Walter is in the headlines after selling the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission investigating insurance companies Walter owns.F1’s newest team just got even more newsworthy.Grades: Your midseason team report card resultsNow, let’s go back to last week’s PT, where I presented Luke Smith and Madeline Coleman’s midseason team report cards feature for the 2026 campaign. Afterward, I asked you to assign your own grade for each team.