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Valtteri Bottas has dismissed concerns about his immediate future with Cadillac after the surprise departure of Graeme Lowdon, insisting he remains set to complete the season and continue into next year.
Lowdon was relieved of his duties during Formula 1’s summer break by CEO Dan Towriss. The former Alpine technical chief Marcin Budkowski has since been appointed as his replacement, creating a significant change in the leadership structure of Cadillac’s debut F1 campaign.
Asked whether the reshuffle had raised concerns about his race seat, Bottas replied: “Not in the near future, no.”
He added: “I’m still all set, obviously, for next year. But then eventually we’re going to talk about what is happening beyond 2027, but that’s not yet.”
The comments provide a clear indication that Bottas does not expect the change at the top to affect his position in the short term. They also leave longer-term discussions open, with the driver pointing specifically to the period beyond 2027 as a subject for future negotiations.
Cadillac has yet to score a point in its first F1 season. Bottas’s 13th place in China remains the team’s best result, while reliability problems have continued to undermine its progress during the European part of the campaign.
Those issues have included brakes catching fire and a suspension failure for team-mate Sergio Perez in Canada. Perez has also recently reaffirmed his two-year commitment to the team, as reported in our latest Cadillac update.
Bottas was widely regarded as a Lowdon signing. Around the Monaco Grand Prix, when speculation emerged that the driver could be dropped, Lowdon held an extraordinary press briefing for two media outlets, including RacingNews365, in which he defended Bottas.
Despite that personal connection, Bottas said he respected the decision to remove Lowdon and accepted that its value would only become clear with time.
“I respect [the decision] and like with any change, time will always tell what change is good and what change is bad,” he said. “I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know Marcin that well yet.”
He acknowledged that he had worked closely with Lowdon, but suggested that a change was necessary after some problems had persisted. “I think that something needed to change; some of the issues we’ve had have been dragging along, but I didn’t maybe expect such a big change,” Bottas said.
The Finn added that drivers are focused primarily on driving, performance and feedback rather than the way a team is structured. “We are not the people who structure the team; that is not our job,” he concluded.
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