Audi AG CEO Gernot Dollner insists that the management combination of Mattia Binotto and Jonathan Wheatley will be the “perfect solution” for the German marque’s Formula 1 project.
Binotto started last month as COO and CTO of Sauber, while Wheatley will join next summer as team principal after first undertaking gardening leave following his end-of-season departure from Red Bull.
They replace Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffman, who had been running the Hinwil project.
Dollner insists says that the two newcomers will have specific roles in the operation.
“We started by the end of July to realign our management structure with clear responsibilities,” said Dollner.
“And I’m really happy that we found a strong management for our F1 project with Mattia Binotto, who will be in lead for all the operations in Hinwil as COO and CTO, and at the latest July 1 next year with Jonathan Wheatley, who will be team principal and taking care of all the racing operations on track.
“And with this we believe very future-oriented set up with a strong dual leadership team, one taking care of the operations with the project and the car, and the other one handling our operations on the race track and being the spokesperson. We believe that we found a perfect solution for our future operations.”
Expanding on the decision he said: “Mattia is to me, the perfect fit to our team with his 30-year experience. He knows how it feels to win. He has experience in different roles.
“And so together with Jonathan, who will join later, we believe that we have a perfect constellation to see where we are right now, and really to create a set-up, an organisation, technological aspects, to develop that plan that brings us to the top in the future.”
Dollner denied rumours that at one stage Audi had considered cancelling the F1 project.
“To be honest, that was that was never questioned,” he said. “It was never questioned that F1 is a great motorsports platform, the pinnacle of motorsports worldwide.
“We just re-evaluated if our setup is the right one. And as you know, we then came up to take over complete responsibility for the Sauber team earlier than we expected.
“And in the second step, we now established future-oriented management structures, so that was not our question. It was more how to how to organise, and how to how to move on.”
Dollner conceded that Audi has now realised that it will take longer than anticipated to become a frontrunning team.
“We see our F1 project really, as a long-term project,” he said. “And after I joined Audi, in September last year, we did an evaluation of our project, and it ended up with the setup we found, and also we maybe recalibrated our time path to a more realistic to a more realistic one.
“We can’t tell details, as we are still discussing several aspects, how to sort out. But I think we are quite realistic when it comes to timing.”
He added: “We are aware that it will be a several-year programme. We started the discussion how ambitious we can be, but we haven’t finished that discussion.
“And so we will have that in the upcoming month, and after re-evaluation of the of the actual management team, and then come with that information later.”
