Red Bull <\/a>agreed to release him early from his contract.<\/p>\nHe effectively takes the place vacated by Alessandro Alunni Bravi, who previously served as Sauber\u2019s team representative and managing director, and will work alongside COO and CTO Mattia Binotto.<\/p>\n
After visiting the team\u2019s headquarters in Switzerland, Wheatley attended the Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend to understand the operational side of Sauber\u2019s race team.<\/p>\n
New energy at Sauber<\/p>\n
In much the same way as Lewis Hamilton felt after joining Ferrari, Wheatley also feels \u201cre-energised\u201d after switching teams over the winter.<\/p>\n
The energy comes from seeing a relatively small team – albeit one with a state-of-the-art factory – transition into a works team backed by one of the world\u2019s biggest automotive groups.<\/p>\n
Sauber has had manufacturer backing before, most notably from BMW in the noughties, but the deal with Audi is expected to take one of F1\u2019s longest-running teams to new heights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting. I\u2019m re-energised. There\u2019s an energy in the company in this transition from Sauber to the Audi Formula 1 project,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these guys will know what it’s like to be in a smaller team that\u2019s getting bigger. The people there, they look you in the eye. There\u2019s an energy which I\u2019m feeding off. It feels like a really great time to be there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like I\u2019m in absolutely the right place, to be honest. My family and I, we\u2019ve moved to Switzerland \u2013 an amazing country, which I had kind of driven through but never stayed in. Honestly, we\u2019re making a home for ourselves, and I feel very, very at home at Sauber.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Jonathan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/XPB_1259191_HiRes.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Jonathan Wheatley and Christian Horner<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0XPB Images<\/p>\n
Given his history at Red Bull, it\u2019s natural that Wheatley was asked to compare his new surroundings at Hinwil with his time at Milton Keynes.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously a question I\u2019ve been asking myself before I joined the team and taking on the learnings from the first race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve given myself a target for the first three races \u2013 it\u2019s a triple-header \u2013 and it\u2019s very interesting to see how a team performs over a triple-header, whether there\u2019s accident damage, how you recover from that, fatigue \u2013 you get a really good picture of how a team operates at the end of that period.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying not to jump to any conclusions. I’m using a lot of pen ink at the moment \u2013 making notes and trying to put those notes into structure. I\u2019ll say I\u2019m encouraged with the openness and willingness to learn that I\u2019ve experienced in the team so far, and the positive energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a people business. If you don\u2019t have that creative energy, you\u2019re not going to keep moving forward. That\u2019s our plan \u2013 just keep building on these little bits of momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
A desire to lead<\/p>\n
Like any other person moving into a leadership role, Wheatley has his own ideas that he wants to execute at Sauber\/Audi.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a people person, and it\u2019s the people that excited me. It\u2019s the working in a team and creating a team that excites me,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve developed my own techniques for that. Everyone that holds a team principal position seems to do it in a slightly different way, but I think everyone at my level understands what a team involves.\u201d
\u00a0
\u201cI’m working towards setting my goals and mid-term plan, then looking at long-term planning after that.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI worked at the last team [Red Bull] for 19 years. I want to be my own team principal. I want to lead the team, along with Mattia, in my own way. I\u2019ve always been pretty sure of my own thoughts and my own views.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a plan for how we can start this transformation journey and carry the momentum through. And I\u2019ll keep referring to it but it\u2019s about the people \u2013 the people in the team. That\u2019s my focus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ensuring harmony<\/p>\n
The Red Bull team Wheatley worked at is based in the heart of Britain\u2019s motorsport valley in Milton Keynes.<\/p>\n
In fact, most F1 teams are based in the same part of the UK, but Sauber is an anomaly on the grid, having always based its operations in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Next year, as Sauber is rebranded into Audi, the existing factory in Hinwil will continue to be responsible for building the chassis, but the power unit will be developed directly by Audi from its facility in Neuberg, almost 450km to the north in Germany.<\/p>\n
UK-born Wheatley thus has to ensure harmony between people from different backgrounds, while also binding together two organisations with very different cultures into one larger manufacturer-backed race team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, as you say \u2013 it\u2019s simple! It\u2019s part of the challenge, part of the fun and excitement I have around starting this new role at this new team,\u201d said Wheatley, who now lives in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the moment, I\u2019m not seeing any issues in terms of the language \u2013 the language of the team, the way people are getting on. There\u2019s an openness to learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to try to learn German. It\u2019s part of the challenge of the role and we\u2019re looking to expand our horizons a little bit.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a small team that\u2019s in the transition phase to becoming a fully-fledged works Formula 1 team. There\u2019s a myriad of projects that we need to get right. And one of those is meshing the people together.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a team, we need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because change is coming. We have to be at the forefront of that and we need to have a clear road map as to where we\u2019re headed \u2013 and I believe we\u2019re on that road map at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As team manager and later sporting director at Red Bull Racing, Jonathan Wheatley was tasked with keeping Red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,15228,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-24712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-jonathan-wheatley","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114347598453487355","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}