What new bosses must do to avoid wasting Audi’s F1 potential –

Binotto’s signing of Wheatley is a good sign for Audi, as it is an example of an initiative that the team will benefit from, even if Wheatley is not available until July 2025.

The organisation will now include former Ferrari and Red Bull men at the top of the track and at the base, overseeing the team and the project, so there will now be no excuse for failing to identify weaknesses and improve.

Binotto and Whitley will run the team with a clear division of duties. Binotto will be responsible for Sauber Team Management and Technical Development, and will be responsible for integrating car and engine development across Sauber and Audi respectively. Whitley will join the team as Team Principal and “Management Spokesperson”, which essentially means he will be the public face of the team, as well as focusing on operational management.

Whitley’s skills and experience could be a good fit to address some of Sauber’s key weaknesses. Whitley has been a key part of making Red Bull a sharp, operationally intelligent team, and Sauber has been the complete opposite of that recently.

In addition to the various technical problems hampering the Sauber team’s progress, there were many problems with the cars, some well known such as the pitstop problems which have now been eliminated at least through hardware changes, while others remain unsolved.

While Wheatley deals with that, Binotto can focus on the big red flag about the Audi project at the moment, which is that a team that is 100% controlled by Audi looks lost under these rules.

The expectation this year was for Sauber to move one step closer to the level suitable for a full Audi team in 2026.

Sauber needed to get back to where they were at the start of 2022 when they were scoring points on a regular basis and on an upward trajectory. But they haven’t achieved that yet. Sauber is the only team still without a point this season, and they are failing across the board.

Yes, it’s a close field but Sauber are always on the wrong side of it, which is really worrying.

These are cars that are hard to get the best out of, and one area where Sauber has consistently struggled is getting a car to perform across a wide range of cornering speed profiles. This is reflected in the Sauber being the slowest car on average in 2024, according to Formula 1’s Super Lap Times (which are calculated by taking the fastest time of each car on each weekend).

Development during the season was also weak. Just as in 2022, Sauber was unable to match the effectiveness of the upgrades offered by its rivals with its own updates. It started much lower in the standings this year than it did in 2022, when it even outperformed Mercedes at times.

There was no mention of the midfield heroics that were an integral part of Sauber’s Formula 1 DNA.

So the question is whether the structural changes have been completed. Binotto must ensure that key positions in the team are on par with the new Audi team principal in terms of experience and standards, including current technical director James Key, a key appointment for former Sauber CEO Andreas Seidl.

Audi’s next priority

Now Audi has restructured its Formula 1 project management and secured a team principal, and the next step is likely to be securing a second driver for 2025.

Carlos Sainz was the main domino in the Formula 1 driver market. He was Audi’s first choice, and the fact that he was chosen by Williams was a huge blow to the project’s credibility, but the project could not sit back and lick its wounds.

While it is unclear what Binotto’s view is on who should team up with Nico Hulkenberg, current Sauber driver Valtteri Bottas is now the obvious choice.

Now the most accomplished free agent with 10 Formula 1 wins to his name, he continues to perform at a high level, has the experience the struggling team desperately needs and provides continuity.

The reason Bottas wasn’t actually signed wasn’t just to wait for Sainz. Seidl wasn’t interested in Bottas at all. Bottas seemed to feel frozen.

But a lot has changed since then. Sainz has gone elsewhere, Seidl has been replaced, and Esteban Ocon has joined Haas.

Regardless of whether Binotto is a big believer in Bottas or not, the situation is simple: Bottas is interested and Sauber’s other options are limited.

Audi will have to choose between drivers such as Bottas’ current team-mate Zhu Guanyu or outgoing Haas driver Kevin Magnussen, or rookies such as Sauber’s Theo Bourchier. Seidl had been eyeing Liam Lawson if the Red Bull rookie was available, but Binotto is expected to want someone more experienced.

What is not yet entirely clear is the timetable for any decision Sauber makes. Amid a two-week summer hiatus, the situation could be temporarily frozen until the teams meet again at Zandvoort.

The shaded part of the Audi

So much has happened on the mass side of things that a key part of Audi’s project has barely been discussed lately: the engine.

The engine software is advanced and going well, or so the team claims. This is the part of the story that Audi has a lot of control over, and everything the company has revealed has been very positive.

Audi has signed its first official partner in 2026 through an exclusive technical alliance with BP and Castrol Fuels & Lubricants. BP will develop the new 100% sustainable fuel for Audi, which is important for the development of the V6 engine.

Audi’s head of powertrains (above, right) Adam Becker claims there are already an impressive number of different fuels tested so far, with the company using three single-cylinder test benches intensively to develop the fuel.

The complete engine is running “dynamically” on the test bench, which includes the V6 engine, electric motor, battery and control electronics. The engine has already covered simulated race distances, with much of the test time completed with individual components last year. It will soon do the same with the engine combined with the transmission.

Various tracks were simulated to test different things, such as the high-speed Las Vegas circuit which helps develop overall energy management. Other tracks used included Silverstone and the Red Bull Ring.

What will be crucial for this project is how the engine side in Germany and the team headquarters in Switzerland work together so that they are not two separate sides at all. That’s always difficult when there is such a big geographical divide – just look at how Renault failed miserably to properly integrate its team base at Enstone in the UK and its engine facility in Ferry in France.

Audi says it started a 2026 car design team at Sauber in January 2023, and that team has now intensified with the 2026 car regulations in place, although they are rudimentary and subject to change. Audi is clearly happy with the results so far, claiming it has “achieved all the targets we set ourselves” for performance and efficiency at this stage of development.

If it goes as well as Audi claims, it will be up to Binotto and Whitley to make sure Sauber doesn’t fail.