Wheatley convinced Audi 'will be winning races and championships’

As the 2025 Formula 1 season unfolds, Sauber’s final transformation into Audi’s works team for 2026 looms large, and new team principal Jonathan Wheatley is wasting no time in setting ambitious goals for the Swiss outfit.

After a storied 18-year tenure at Red Bull, where he played a pivotal role in securing multiple championships, Wheatley joined Sauber in April 2025, bringing with him a wealth of experience and a fierce determination to elevate the Hinwil-based outfit.

In a recent interview with Reuters, Wheatley made it clear that Audi’s entry into F1 is not about merely participating but about dominating.

With Sauber climbing to eighth in the constructors’ standings after Nico Hülkenberg’s impressive P5 in Spain, Wheatley’s confidence in Audi’s future, underpinned by significant investments and a clear roadmap for success, is timely.

Audi Ambition: Building From the Ground Up

The current Sauber operation has struggled in recent years. Until Hülkenberg’s fifth-place finish in Spain last weekend, the team was languishing at the bottom of the Constructors' standings.

Sauber has won only one race since its arrival in F1 in 1993 – in 2008, at the Canadian Grand Prix with Robert Kubica, at a time when it was under BMW ownership – and skepticism remains around Audi’s yet-to-be-raced 2026 power unit.

But Wheatley insists the foundations are being laid with intent and long-term vision.

“We're looking at a campus expansion, we've got an ambitious program ahead of us and investment from Audi and QIA (Qatar Investment Authority). I'm really, really super-excited about where we're at,” Wheatley told Reuters’ Alan Baldwin.

“I do not come to work to make up the numbers. I absolutely believe that we'll get on that path and we'll be winning races and world championships.”

A Bold Move From Red Bull to Sauber

Wheatley left Red Bull Racing at the end of 2023, stepping away from the most dominant team of the past two decades.

He played a key role in the Milton Keynes's based outfit’s 120 Grand Prix victories, eight Drivers’ titles, six Constructors’ championships, and – and was a central figure during the intense 2021 title decider in Abu Dhabi between Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton.

At that infamous race, Wheatley’s competitive instincts were displayed when a radio exchange with then race director Michael Masi influenced a controversial safety car decision that handed the title to Max Verstappen, the Dutchman’s first world crown.

“The radio transcripts in Abu Dhabi showed the extreme competitive passion from all the teams and I can’t begin to tell you what that feels like on the pitwall in a world championship life or death situation,” he said, reflecting on the moment.

“There's a lot of people in my position in the sport who are intensely competitive. I've absolutely absorbed myself in that [at Red Bull] and I'm absorbing myself here.

“It really genuinely feels like my team already and I've only been here two months.”

A New Challenge at the Right Time

Wheatley said the move to Sauber felt “entirely natural” and came without hesitation, in contrast to his decision much earlier in his career to leave Renault for Red Bull, which he described as much tougher.

Despite Red Bull’s dominance in 2023 – winning 21 of 22 races – Wheatley felt drawn to the prospect of building something new again, especially during Audi’s transformative phase.

Red Bull has since faced turbulence, with internal tensions involving team boss Christian Horner and key figures like Adrian Newey and Jos Verstappen.

“There was a huge amount of talented people in that team over the whole period I was there,” he explained. “I've learned from as many of them as I could... we knitted a team together there and we did something quite extraordinary.

“I absolutely loved that initial stage of transforming a team and then I kind of wanted to do it again...

“The idea of coming to this team in this transition period at this point in history was enormously attractive to me.”

The message from Hinwil is clear: Audi is not joining Formula 1 just to be a participant. They're aiming for the top – and Jonathan Wheatley intends to lead them there.

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