Is this ex-Red Bull mastermind the next top F1 team principal?

As team manager and later sporting director at Red Bull Racing, Jonathan Wheatley was tasked with keeping Red Bull on the right side of the sporting regulations and managing its record-beating pit crew.

For a person who initially started his career in motorsport as a mechanic with Benetton/Renault, his nearly two-decade stint at Milton Keynes was key in honing his skills as a manager.

These skills will now be put to the test as he takes on the role of team principal at Sauber ahead of its transition into a full-blown Audi works team.

In many ways, his transition from a senior team figure to team principal echoes the journey of James Vowles, who went from being the strategy director at Mercedes to leading Williams.

Like Vowles, Wheatley also wanted to be his own man and take full control of a team, having spent such a large part of his career working in the shadows of Christian Horner.

But while there is no denying that Wheatley played an instrumental role in turning Red Bull into the powerhouse that it is today, his job at Sauber/Audi won’t be that simple.

Wheatley took office at the Hinwil-based team on 1 April, three months ahead of his planned starting date in July, after Red Bull agreed to release him early from his contract.

He effectively takes the place vacated by Alessandro Alunni Bravi, who previously served as Sauber’s team representative and managing director, and will work alongside COO and CTO Mattia Binotto.

After visiting the team’s headquarters in Switzerland, Wheatley attended the Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend to understand the operational side of Sauber’s race team.

New energy at Sauber

In much the same way as Lewis Hamilton felt after joining Ferrari, Wheatley also feels “re-energised” after switching teams over the winter.

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’s biggest automotive groups.

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’s longest-running teams to new heights.

“It’s exciting. I’m re-energised. There’s an energy in the company in this transition from Sauber to the Audi Formula 1 project,” he said.

“Some of these guys will know what it's like to be in a smaller team that’s getting bigger. The people there, they look you in the eye. There’s an energy which I’m feeding off. It feels like a really great time to be there.

“I feel like I’m in absolutely the right place, to be honest. My family and I, we’ve moved to Switzerland – an amazing country, which I had kind of driven through but never stayed in. Honestly, we’re making a home for ourselves, and I feel very, very at home at Sauber.”

Given his history at Red Bull, it’s natural that Wheatley was asked to compare his new surroundings at Hinwil with his time at Milton Keynes.

“It’s obviously a question I’ve been asking myself before I joined the team and taking on the learnings from the first race,” he said.

“I’ve given myself a target for the first three races – it’s a triple-header – and it’s very interesting to see how a team performs over a triple-header, whether there’s accident damage, how you recover from that, fatigue – you get a really good picture of how a team operates at the end of that period.

“I’m trying not to jump to any conclusions. I'm using a lot of pen ink at the moment – making notes and trying to put those notes into structure. I’ll say I’m encouraged with the openness and willingness to learn that I’ve experienced in the team so far, and the positive energy.

“It’s a people business. If you don’t have that creative energy, you’re not going to keep moving forward. That’s our plan – just keep building on these little bits of momentum.”

A desire to lead

Like any other person moving into a leadership role, Wheatley has his own ideas that he wants to execute at Sauber/Audi.

“I’m a people person, and it’s the people that excited me. It’s the working in a team and creating a team that excites me,” he explained.

“I’ve 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.”
 
“I'm working towards setting my goals and mid-term plan, then looking at long-term planning after that.

He added: “I 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’ve always been pretty sure of my own thoughts and my own views.

“I have a plan for how we can start this transformation journey and carry the momentum through. And I’ll keep referring to it but it’s about the people – the people in the team. That’s my focus.”

Ensuring harmony

The Red Bull team Wheatley worked at is based in the heart of Britain’s motorsport valley in Milton Keynes.

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.

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.

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.

“Well, as you say – it’s simple! It’s part of the challenge, part of the fun and excitement I have around starting this new role at this new team,” said Wheatley, who now lives in Switzerland.

“At the moment, I’m not seeing any issues in terms of the language – the language of the team, the way people are getting on. There’s an openness to learning.

“I’m going to try to learn German. It’s part of the challenge of the role and we’re looking to expand our horizons a little bit.

“It’s a small team that’s in the transition phase to becoming a fully-fledged works Formula 1 team. There’s a myriad of projects that we need to get right. And one of those is meshing the people together.

“As 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’re headed – and I believe we’re on that road map at the moment.”