---
title: audi-f1-org-talent-map
description: Audi lost its team principal two races into its F1 debut. Its dual leadership, three talent pools and hardest hire, read through org diagnosis and talent mapping.
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---

[Nobu Sato](https://nobusato.jp/en?hsLang=en)

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2026.10.21

# Audi's First Year in F1, Read Through Org Design and Talent Mapping

On March 20, 2026, two races into the new Formula 1 season, Audi announced that team principal Jonathan Wheatley was leaving with immediate effect. The stated reason was "personal reasons."

I skipped the comment sections that day. Instead I went back and found the announcement of his appointment from two years earlier. When an executive leaves in their first year, I usually start by looking at how they came in.

I have spent more than ten years in recruiting and building organizations, mostly setting up teams from nothing, including several new offices abroad. The Audi story is close to a ready-made case study for me. A traditional carmaker buys a Swiss team with over thirty years of history and says it will fight for the championship by 2030. And because the organization is still being built, more of it is public than for any other team.

What follows is Audi taken apart the way I take apart organizations in my own work on org diagnosis and talent mapping. All facts come from public reporting. Where only one outlet reported something, I say so. Where something is my judgment, I say that too.

## Three sites, four restructures in four years

Audi F1 is not in one place. The chassis is built in Hinwil, Switzerland, the old Sauber base. The power unit is built in Neuburg, Germany. In 2025 a technical centre opened in Bicester, England.

The leadership timeline looks roughly like this:

- 2022: Audi announces it will enter F1 as a works team
- 2024: Sauber CEO Andreas Seidl and chairman Oliver Hoffmann leave. Former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto joins as COO and CTO, and Red Bull sporting director Jonathan Wheatley is named team principal shortly after
- 2025: Adam Baker, CEO of the power unit company, leaves and a COO role is created
- 2026: Wheatley leaves in March and Binotto adds the team principal role. In April Allan McNish becomes Racing Director, reporting to Binotto

One outlet counted this as the fourth management restructure since the project was announced.

2024Sauber's CEO and chairman leaveBinotto joins as COO and CTO2025.04Wheatley starts as team principal: two headsBinotto runs the project, Wheatley the team; both report to Döllner2026.03Wheatley leaves two races into the seasonBinotto adds the team principal role2026.04McNish named Racing DirectorReports to Binotto: two heads become one

**Fig.1**The dual setup lasted from April 2025 to March 2026, then folded into one head.

Four changes in four years is not unusual for an organization in its build phase. What caught my attention was the structure in the middle of it: two heads.

## The risk of dual leadership is readable from the press releases

From 2024, Binotto ran the overall project and Wheatley ran the team. Both reported directly to Audi CEO Gernot Döllner. When Wheatley started, the official line was that both men's roles and deliverables were clearly defined.

I hold myself to one rule when I look at an organization. Policy documents and official statements count as claims. Only real trade-offs and behaviour count as facts. "Clearly defined roles" is a claim. The only way to test it is to find a moment when the two people genuinely disagreed and see who made the final call. That kind of event is invisible from outside, so I leave that cell empty. An empty cell is more honest than a made-up one.

One report is worth noting, though. It says Binotto was not involved in hiring Wheatley. Only a third party said this, but if it is true, one of two people who had to make decisions together every day had no part in choosing the other. That looks to me like a gap in the process. It tells us nothing about which of the two was more capable.

I look at organizations in four layers. At the bottom is the core: real priorities, the real power structure, and what actually gets rewarded or punished. Above that are patterns, meaning how the organization bends under pressure. Then equipment: people, processes, systems, the things money can buy. On the outside is context: whether this organization fits the business stage it is in right now. If the core is off, anything you fix in the three layers above will quietly get undone. Dual leadership sits right in the core, in the cell for the real power structure.

ContextDoes the organization fit its current business stage?Match the stage, don't remodelEquipmentPeople, processes, systems, mechanismsThe only layer money fixes directlyPatternsHow the organization bends under pressureHidden in good times, shows under stressCore (veto layer)Real priorities, real power structure, real rewardsAudi's two heads sit here

**Fig.2**Four layers of org diagnosis. Dual leadership sits in the bottom layer, the core.

Now the person. Wheatley spent close to twenty years at Red Bull, rising from team manager to sporting director. Audi was his first job as a team principal. In 2025 the team scored points several times, Hülkenberg took a podium at Silverstone, and the team moved off the bottom of the standings. So I can't find an event that supports the idea that he was the wrong hire. On results, at least, he passed.

So why did he leave? The public record has two stories that don't fit together. In mid-2025 he said he wanted to still be on the project in five years and that he liked living in Switzerland. When he left, Binotto said personal reasons meant he couldn't make a long-term commitment. Sky Sports reported that he had always wanted to go back to England.

I have to admit something here. The talent assessment model I use had no field for "he wants to go home to England." I ended up putting it in the context layer, as a constraint of work location and life. Since this case, when I search for a role that is one of two heads, I check a few more things up front. Did the other head take part in the interviews and sign off on the candidate? Where does the candidate's family actually live, and is the move real? I check that against how they handled a past cross-border job, not against what they tell me. And where does the decision boundary between the two sit, tested against one real disagreement?

There is also an inference I'm holding loosely, because I only have this one case. In companies with two heads, or with incomplete authority at the top, senior people may be easier to recruit away than in comparable single-head structures. Headhunters should care about this, because you need no inside information to see it. The division of responsibilities in the official announcement is enough.

Audi's fix was to fold two heads into one. McNish runs trackside operations and reports to Binotto. According to a Formula1.com reporter, Binotto said taking on the team principal role was only a stopgap, since he needed the bandwidth for Audi's first in-house power unit, so they moved to a more traditional reporting line.

A side note. At the time, quite a few outlets called McNish the new team principal. That was wrong. In F1, team principal and racing director are two different jobs. One drives transformation at the factory, the other runs every race weekend at the track. The responsibilities were deliberately split across two titles and the market's vocabulary hadn't caught up. This kind of title trap is worse than a candidate mislabelling their own CV, because here the media got it wrong, and the media is the source we lean on most in research.

## Why open a technical centre in England?

Now to talent mapping.

When people hear that Audi opened a technical centre in Bicester, many read it as a business decision: closer to suppliers, good for the brand. I read it first as an outcome of the talent map.

When I build a talent map, I sort target companies into rings by how far they are from the role. Ring 1 is the same problem and the same job, such as another team's power unit department. Ring 2 is a different business with similar daily work, such as hybrid groups in endurance racing or Formula E, or high-performance electric drive in production cars. Ring 3 is where you find people once you drop the condition you can most afford to drop. Hiring from there needs a development plan attached.

The catch is that the same ring can be very thick in one place and nearly empty in another.

Bicester sits in Motorsport Valley, with several F1 teams within a few dozen miles. Ring 1 is very thick there. Hinwil has only its own team, so people have to relocate. Neuburg is thinner still. Germany has no other F1 power unit maker, so Ring 1 there is close to empty.

Neuburg (DE) · power unitRing 1: nearly emptyGermany's only F1 engine makerHinwil (CH) · chassisRing 1: mediumOne team only; people relocateBicester (UK) · tech centreRing 1: very thickMotorsport Valley, many teamsNo Ring 1 at home, so part of the organization moves to where Ring 1 is

**Fig.3**Three sites, three very different talent pools.

When a core function has no Ring 1 locally, an organization really has two options. Hire from outer rings and accept a long ramp-up, or move part of the organization to where Ring 1 is. Audi did the second. Binotto said plainly at the time that the point was to tap the local talent pool.

Since then I treat this as a principle. Choosing a location is a talent decision. The talent map should answer it during org design, before the office opens, not after.

This October Audi announced a new campus in Hinwil, and Binotto said it would matter for attracting and keeping top talent. After the Wheatley episode, I understand why keeping made it into that sentence.

## The hardest hire

Say a carmaker planning to enter F1 as a works team asks me to hire a power unit systems engineer. I break the role down first, and only then list companies.

What this role really screens for comes down to four axes. Judgment in hybrid integration, meaning trading energy between the engine, motor and battery. Experience developing under tight regulatory constraints. Awareness of the cost cap. And the ability to do written work in German or English.

Next I set the order in which to relax them, starting with whatever can be learned fastest on the job. Cost cap awareness can be taught in three to six months. Development under strict rules can be learned in endurance racing or Formula E. Hybrid integration takes one to two years, and someone inside has to be able to teach it. I don't relax language. In an organization running across three sites at once, people who can't keep up in the working language rarely grow into it. More often they leave early.

I also write down what we don't require. No F1 experience, for example. It is the most visible condition, so it is the easiest to mistake for a hard requirement, and that shuts out good people in Ring 2.

At this point you hit a structural problem. The people with the deepest hybrid integration experience are mostly in German powertrain organizations, and they are not necessarily strong at cross-border work. People in England have the domain depth but would have to work in Germany. In this role, domain depth and cross-site ability pull against each other. I don't call that "no one in the market." The role is hard because two conditions exclude each other.

My usual recommendation here is to split the role: a German-native engineer with deep hybrid expertise, plus a bilingual role that handles system integration across sites. Hybrid engineers aren't rare. Bilingual cross-site people aren't rare. One person with both is. Turning a scarcity problem into a headcount problem usually makes it much easier to solve.

Original role: one personHybrid integration depth+ cross-site German/EnglishThe two pull against each othersplitGerman-native hybrid engineerHolds the domain depthBilingual cross-site integratorHolds the three sites togetherCost: one headcount becomes two, and their decision rights must be drawn first

**Fig.4**Each skill is common on its own. Together they are rare. Turn a scarcity problem into a headcount problem.

Pay should be banded by location too. The gap between Switzerland, Germany and England is probably wider than any single country's band. One band means either overpaying in Germany or failing to close in Switzerland.

## How to read the results

As of the Singapore round in October, Audi is eighth in the constructors' standings with 23 points. Mercedes leads with close to 580. Both drivers are confirmed for 2027.

The first races brought plenty of reliability trouble. Most reporting said the power unit lacked power, while the chassis was already around the midfield.

My caution is this: don't read poor results as a sign that the people aren't good enough. On the chassis side you can hire straight from Ring 1. Technical director James Key joined after leaving McLaren in 2023. On the power unit side, Ring 1 in Germany is close to empty and developing hybrid integration takes one to two years. When two capabilities grow at different speeds, the gap in results shows up on the slower side.

For a company about to enter a new market, this is practical. Set expectations for the first year or two by how long the slowest capability takes to build.

## The same problems in Japan

Most of the companies I work with are overseas firms starting business in Japan, many of them Chinese hardware and software companies. The problems Audi ran into show up in them almost unchanged.

The head of the Japan entity and the person sent from headquarters often form two heads in practice. On paper one reports to the other, but decisions on money, people and product are split between them. The risk of one of them leaving is often built in on the day of the appointment.

Whether to open offices in Osaka or Fukuoka is a talent map question as well. How thick Ring 1 is for a given role in a given city largely decides whether that office can get off the ground.

Language can't be relaxed in Japan either. A role that needs Japanese, Chinese and English has the same kind of difficulty as hybrid depth plus cross-site language. Each alone is common. Together they are rare. Splitting roles and banding pay by location work here too.

Here is something from my own experience. A few years ago I set up a company's Taipei office from scratch, and four questions landed on my desk at the start. At the time I didn't connect them to any method. Next to Audi, each one turns out to be a smaller version of the same problem.

First, where to put the office. Budget and branding had to be weighed together. We chose a landmark building in the city centre. The company was unknown locally and candidates hadn't heard our name, but everyone knew the building, and it did a large share of our branding for us. I think that money went further than a lot of job ads would have. Looking back, it was the same kind of decision as Audi going to Bicester. Where the office is decides which talent pool you can draw from, and whether the first people are willing to come.

Second, which platforms to recruit on. For the engineering, art and operations teams we used three different local job platforms, each well known in its own field. Those three groups don't sit in the same pool, so forcing one platform onto all of them would have made hiring hard for two of the teams. Choosing a platform is choosing a ring. How far the people on each platform are from your role is settled before you post the first job.

Third, who the first two hires should be. I went with a "2 tops" setup and hired two experienced HR people, both able to build a team on their own. I had two reasons. One was to prevent a culture mismatch: whoever is there first shapes who comes next, and two people can correct each other. The other was redundancy in team capability: if something happened to one, the other could take the load.

Last, how to make sure those two didn't run into trouble. At the start I was in Taipei every day, watching things in real time, and there were no problems. After I stepped back from being on site, the two HR leads stopped getting along, and in the end one of them left.

It was only while writing about Audi that I realized I had built two heads in Taipei too. The redundancy was what I wanted, and the friction came with it. While I was there every day, I was the person who made the call, so the boundary between the two never needed to be written down. Once I stepped back, it showed. That is my understanding now, and it may not be complete. If I did it again I would still pick two people, but I'd settle the things above during interviews. The two meet and accept each other. The decision boundary between them, and between them and me, is spelled out with a concrete scenario before they start. And it's decided in advance who makes the call once I'm no longer on site.

Early on: in Taipei every dayMe (on site daily)HR AHR BNo written boundary needed; I made the callsLater: I stepped backMe (not on site)HR AHR B leftfrictionThe boundary showed; one of them left

**Fig.5**Taipei's two tops. No trouble while I was there; once I stepped back, the boundary showed.

## What I haven't worked out yet

Audi's target is to fight for the championship by 2030. It now has a single head, with Binotto running the transformation across three sites and a race team at the same time. That solves the problems of two heads, but it puts every decision on one person. He said he took on the team principal job because he needed bandwidth for the power unit. Read the other way, his bandwidth is already the bottleneck.

Two heads tend to lose people. One head tends to wear the person out. My current view is that a single head is steadier in the build phase, and that sooner or later it will need splitting again at scale. I have two samples behind that view now: Audi, and my own Taipei office. The scale differs by several orders of magnitude, but the ending looks alike: one of the two heads left. Two is still too few. Audi should announce more organizational changes at the end of the season, and I'll come back to this then.

Sources

- [Audi: New management structure for the Audi F1 Project (2026-03-20)](https://www.audi.com/en/press-releases/new-management-structure-for-the-audi-f1-project-17076)
- [Formula1.com: Allan McNish announced as new Racing Director at Audi (2026-04-24)](https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/allan-mcnish-announced-as-new-racing-director-at-audi.7tvoImWOKBhXlW4Qb1XAZ9)
- [Crash.net: Allan McNish's new F1 role in Audi's post-Jonathan Wheatley reshuffle explained (2026-04-24)](https://www.crash.net/f1/news/1093411/1/allan-mcnishs-new-f1-role-audis-post-jonathan-wheatley-reshuffle-explained)
- [Sky Sports: Jonathan Wheatley to leave Red Bull and join Audi F1 project (2024)](https://www.skysports.com/f1/news/12433/13188743/jonathan-wheatley-red-bull-sporting-director-to-leave-team-and-join-audi-f1-project-in-surprise-move)
- [On SI: Red Bull reveals key Jonathan Wheatley replacement plans (2024)](https://www.si.com/onsi/f1/news/f1-news-red-bull-reveals-key-jonathan-wheatley-replacement-plans-as-director-leaves-for-audi-01j4cece62r5)
- [Formula1.com: Audi announce organisational restructure ahead of F1 arrival in 2026 (2025)](https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/audi-announce-organisational-restructure-ahead-of-f1-arrival-in-2026.1FejBxrI8UMuxu1plVnzNC)
- [Formula1.com: Sauber open new UK Technology Centre (2025)](https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/sauber-open-new-uk-technology-centre-as-transformation-into-audi-continues.2rXNDWnkLmC1P3KWM8TscJ)
- [Motorsport Week: Audi announces major plans for 'next chapter' of F1 journey (2026-10-01)](https://www.motorsportweek.com/2026/10/01/audi-major-f1-plans/)
- [F1-Fansite: 2026 F1 Standings (after Singapore)](https://www.f1-fansite.com/f1-results/f1-standings-2026-championship/)
- [DH.net / Belga: Audi confirme Bortoleto et Hülkenberg en 2027 (2026-09-24)](https://www.dhnet.be/dernieres-depeches/2026/09/24/f1-audi-confirme-bortoleto-et-hulkenberg-en-2027-I3RJDSFKXJGR7PGO7C236QRJZI/)

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Writing about building organizations in Japan, in three languages.

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