Mattia Binotto has moved quickly to shut down the most obvious question Audi created for itself by parting company with Jonathan Wheatley on the eve of Suzuka: who’s the new team principal?
In Binotto’s telling, there won’t be one — at least not in the conventional sense. Audi isn’t going shopping for a headline appointment, he insists. Instead, the operation will lean into the idea that leadership doesn’t have to be packaged into a single, neatly titled figure at the top of the pit wall.
“For the future, I think we are not looking for a new team principal,” Binotto said after the Japanese Grand Prix. “I will keep the role, but I will need someone to support me at the race weekends, because I will not always be at the race weekend myself.
“I need to focus most on the factory, where there is the most to transform… So certainly, support at a race weekend is required.”
That line about “transform” was doing plenty of heavy lifting. Audi’s project is no longer simply about bolt-on upgrades and incremental gains; it’s in the uncomfortable phase where organisational design matters as much as lap time. The company has spent the last 18 months reshuffling responsibilities between Hinwil and Neuburg, and Wheatley’s sudden exit only underlines how hard it is to make a hybrid structure behave like a cohesive works team.
Wheatley arrived from Red Bull at the start of 2025, stepping out from behind the sporting director’s desk and into his first team principal job. It was a significant change in profile as much as position — and, for long spells last season, he effectively became the public face of what was still officially Sauber while it prepared to become Audi in full. The team’s second-half resurgence in 2025 gave that leadership model a useful narrative: upgrades landed, points started to come, and Nico Hulkenberg even grabbed the first podium of his long F1 career.
But the paddock has been murmuring for months that the power structure wasn’t as clean as the org chart suggested.
Binotto, after all, had been installed earlier — in August 2024 — as chief operating and chief technical officer with sweeping responsibility for day-to-day management and sporting success. Wheatley’s remit, when it was announced, sounded substantial too: racing performance focus, operational management of race events, and spokesperson duties representing Audi in Formula 1. Binotto, by comparison, would steer the Hinwil operation and act as the key technical link to Neuburg.
Then came another tweak: reporting lines “optimised”, Binotto becoming ‘Head of F1 Project’, and the removal of Audi’s F1 CEO role as Adam Baker departed, with Christian Foyer stepping in as COO. If you’re looking for stability, that’s not it. And when roles keep shifting, personal relationships start to count more than job titles — which is where Wheatley’s position was said to have become fragile.
Within those same paddock conversations, Binotto is understood to have built a strong relationship with Audi CEO Gernot Döllner. Wheatley, it’s suggested, didn’t enjoy quite the same footing. Add in Wheatley’s personal considerations — he was weighing a return to the UK — and the moment Aston Martin interest emerged, the endgame began to feel inevitable.
Aston Martin’s side of the story is still officially unwritten, but the expectation hasn’t gone away: Adrian Newey is believed to want Wheatley in his orbit, with Wheatley widely tipped to be the team principal in that structure. Nothing has been confirmed, yet the timing of Audi’s announcement — immediate effect, no runway — spoke to a decision that had been pulled forward rather than carefully staged.
That abruptness is what makes Binotto’s “no replacement” stance so intriguing. It’s not that Audi doesn’t need trackside authority; it’s that it’s choosing to redefine where it sits. Binotto is effectively saying the centre of gravity must stay at the factory during this critical build phase, with race weekends requiring a senior operator to execute rather than a political figurehead to front it all up.
There’s precedent for that in modern F1. Alpine, for example, operates without a team principal, with Steve Nielsen as managing director. Titles matter less than clarity, and clarity is exactly what Audi has been trying to engineer since it bought further into Sauber and later sold a stake to the Qatar Investment Authority in late 2024.
That context also explains why some of the more dramatic rumours never really held up. Christian Horner’s name has been floated in connection with almost every vacancy since his Red Bull departure, but the fit here always looked awkward. Horner is known to be looking for an arrangement that makes him a genuine partner, with equity and autonomy — and there’s nothing in Audi’s recent behaviour to suggest it’s in the mood to hand away more control. Not least given Volkswagen Group’s previous, unsuccessful negotiations with Red Bull over a Porsche tie-up, when VW’s desired level of influence became a deal-breaker.
So if Audi isn’t hiring a “team principal”, who does Binotto want trackside?
The obvious answer is a seasoned hand who can run the weekend machine without needing the big title — and without provoking another internal tug-of-war. In the paddock, Allan McNish has been mentioned as a possibility: a long-time Audi stalwart and one of the earliest figures linked to the F1 project when it was announced four years ago. Whether it’s McNish or someone else, the requirement Binotto outlined is straightforward: dependable senior support at the circuit, while he keeps his focus on the bigger rebuild back at Hinwil.
Binotto, for his part, leaned hard on a message that felt aimed as much at the workforce as at the outside world: don’t panic, the system still works.
“The team has remained very focused and concentrated this weekend, and, operationally, the team has performed very well,” he said. “We can be pleased showing that, at the end, it’s not about an individual, it’s about the team.
“We had great pit stops this weekend, and from the pit wall, I would say, generally speaking, well managed.”
That’s the sales pitch: continuity through process, not personality. But F1 history is littered with teams that tried to corporate their way through a leadership void, only to learn that someone still has to make the final call when the garage is split and the stopwatch is unforgiving.
Audi’s gamble is that it can keep the authority centralised in Binotto while distributing the trackside load to a trusted lieutenant. If it works, it’ll look like a mature, modern structure built around delivery. If it doesn’t, Suzuka will be remembered as the weekend Audi voluntarily made itself harder to read — and easier to test.
