Sauber's new team principal a great fit: 'He has coached that at Red Bull'
F1 News
Sauber, currently competing under the name Stake F1, and the team that will soon become Audi, have named their new team principal for the future: Jonathan Wheatley will join the team from Red Bull Racing. According to Sky Sports pundit Ted Kravitz, Wheatley is an expert in a field where the team have struggled, and named the challenges the Briton will have to face.
Currently serving his gardening leave after his exit from Red Bull Racing, Jonathan Wheatley will join the Audi project next season, where he serve as team principal. The Briton will also work together with Mattia Binotto, and share responsibilities with him, as the Italian was named COO and CTO of the project.
"He's got to figure out how he gets Sauber, who, as their recent pit stop problems have shown, are not operationally as razor sharp, as he [Wheatley] has coached the Red Bull outfit to be, up to that level. Because if Red Bull are up here in terms of delivering great pit stops and strategy and knowing the rules brilliantly and all of that, Sauber are kind of pretty much down at the bottom," Ted Kravitz said in Sky Sports F1 Podcast.
The team are yet to score a point in the 2024 season with, and together with Logan Sargeant, Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou are the only drivers yet to finish in the Top 10 once. They also missed out on possible points because of their pit stop issues that date back to the beginning of the year.
Could Wheatley be the answer?
"He knows the rule book better than anybody else in the world. He's going to have to understand how they work, first of all, before he can identify whether he needs to change it," Kravitz praised the Briton.