‘I won 14 F1 titles with Red Bull but quitting last year was an easy decision’

Exclusive: He spent many years as a trusted lieutenant to Christian Horner at Red Bull, but now Jonathan Wheatley is the man in charge at Sauber, which is soon to become the Audi F1 works team

Joining Red Bull Racing back in 2006 was a tough decision for Jonathan Wheatley. All he had ever known was Renault, previously Benetton, where he had risen through the ranks to be chief mechanic and won Formula 1 titles in three separate seasons, two with Michael Schumacher and one with Fernando Alonso.

In 2005, he was given the chance to walk away from the best team on the grid, that he had called home for more than a decade, for a fresh, new project with a team which still had a lot to learn about F1. Eventually, after much deliberation, he made the leap and helped turn Red Bull into a dominant force in the sport.

Naturally, there are parallels with his decision last year to walk away from Red Bull, having served for 18 years as team manager and then sporting director, to take on the team principal job at Sauber. But weighing up that offer from Audi, he says, didn’t give him nearly as much of a headache.

“Honestly, the offer here made the hair stand up on the back of my neck and I almost didn’t give it a second thought,” he told Mirror Sport. “I really didn’t have anything like the dilemma that I’d had before. I checked that Emma, my wife, was okay to relocate and that’s it. And now I’m sat here as a Swiss resident.”

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Wheatley had risen high and become one of the most respected figures in the paddock. But with Christian Horner the king at Red Bull, he was always going to hit a ceiling in terms of how high he could rise there, which is what prompted him to start looking elsewhere.

And he was not short of offers. “I started to get some phone calls – I guess people were just hunting around to see what was possible,” Wheatley said. “I had several options to continue my career in the UK if I wanted to do it. But, honestly, there was nothing on the table that was anywhere near as exciting as this.

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“This is an absolutely fantastic opportunity, an unprecedented opportunity. I could see very clearly, I’d never have an opportunity like this again. I could add five or 10 percent to another team that I went to. Here, the number is way higher. I come from a big team with a championship winning mentality, and I can contribute a lot. The people here, they’re on board for doing something different.”

Sauber will become the Audi works team in 2026, marking the first time the German carmaking giant has entered F1. Wheatley is one of the main leaders at the outfit, the other being Mattia Binotto who is now the official head of the project, having found a new home at Audi since quitting as Ferrari team principal at the end of 2022.

They share responsibility for the team and that was an attractive proposition for Wheatley. He said: “It was part and parcel of what excited me about coming here in the first place, because modern Formula 1, as we’re sat here at the moment, the calendar is 24 races and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be less than that for a while.

“I think the traditional team principal position of being at every race and in the factory is almost impossible now, unless you’re established. But it was clear coming into here that there was a transformation project and it’s more than one person can handle. I’ve known Mattia since 2006, you know, when we had custom Ferrari engines on my last team. We got on brilliantly, we visited in Maranello and we’re getting on brilliantly now.

“Mattia’s job is to really bring together the car, he’s got to bring chassis and powertrain together, knit that together. And, more or less, when the car leaves the factory, it becomes my responsibility – the racing, the operating of it, the servicing, turnaround, plus commercial marketing. There’s plenty to do, including attending 24 races.”