If you believe that some things are just meant to be, then you’d believe that Jonathan Wheatley was always meant to be a Formula 1 genius. And while I didn’t ask Audi’s first-ever team principal—and Sauber F1’s current boss—if he believed in destiny, my gut tells me that he knows he’s fulfilling his life’s mission of winning championships.
From wrenching on the Benetton of Michael Schumacher in the ’90s and the Renault of Fernando Alonso in the 2000s, to helping shape the Red Bull Racing empire over the last two decades, Wheatley’s evolution from mechanic to boss extraordinaire has been 35 years in the making. Through all the race wins, championships, and world records for quickest pit stops, the 58-year-old from Beaconsfield always managed to fly under the press’ radar—happy to let his much more flamboyant bosses make the headlines—until last year’s Miami Grand Prix.
A tumultuous start to Red Bull’s season—courtesy of allegations of impropriety by Christian Horner and subsequently, the announcement of Adrian Newey’s departure—fixated the world’s gaze on the Milton Keynes squad by the time the F1 circus landed on U.S. soil. It would get worse. The press caught wind of yet another senior RBR member abandoning ship, and suddenly, Wheatley’s media profile was raised 100 notches.
After three decades learning the inner workings of race- and championship-winning F1 teams, he landed The Big One. In fact, two big ones. On Aug. 1, 2024, Wheatley was confirmed as Sauber’s team principal (to take effect halfway through 2025 after a period of gardening leave), and come 2026, he would transition into his permanent role as team principal of the new Audi F1 Team.
I sat down with Wheatley to discuss his career, which, as is typical of the sport’s shakers and movers, is more a way of life than just a profession.
Jerry Perez: I’d love to learn more about where your career started—but not just your actual employment in motorsport. I’d like to go way back to your childhood—how did you get into racing to begin with? What triggered your passion for cars, and what made you want to be a mechanic?
Jonathan Wheatley: So, if I lie back on the couch for a second, yeah, it’s been a journey. I was born into a family with a passion for motor racing. My father raced Lotus Cortinas, Ford GT40s, Lola T70s, Can-Am cars, and Formula 5000s—all he could get his hands on. And for as long as I can remember, I was involved. There was also all the paraphernalia around the house; dad’s race suit being washed on a Sunday, me sitting there with his crash helmet on, pretending I was driving a car, and then the racing cars in the garage. I spent my childhood climbing in and out of them, learning how to change gears, pressing the brake pedals on these extraordinary cars. Still, when I get in them and smell the fumes, it takes me straight back to when I was a kid.
So while my father was part of my journey into motosport, I was a normal kid. I climbed every single tree in the area. I also did things that kids don’t do nowadays, like being set free to run around at Silverstone and climb up the grandstands and annoy the marshals. I think my first British Grand Prix I was one or two years old. I literally sat in the grandstand wrapped in a blanket with my mother, so I grew up around circuits. When I wasn’t at school, I was either with dad or helping his mechanics on his cars, being annoying at first, but then actually learning the mechanic skills that led me to F1.
My father once took me to a circuit called Rye House in the U.K. He had bought my brother and me a 100cc kart to share, and I think even now I can I can vividly remember accelerating out of the pit lane in this two-stroke kart and going, “Wow.” From that point onward, my target was to be an F1 world champion. As it turns out, that would come true, but on the other side of the pit wall—so it wasn’t quite how I intended.
I must’ve been about 9 years old at that time, or maybe 10. By the time I was 12 or 13, I’d stop off at a very famous Ferrari restoration company called DK Engineering on my way home from school, and I’d sweep up the floor and I’d empty the bins and I’d annoy the mechanics and, you know, just generally integrate myself. I ended up doing an apprenticeship there when I left school. I’d always been good with my hands, and I was always building Tamiya and Airfix models. I was fascinated to know how things work. I was always taking things apart and trying to put them back together again. I think that inquisitive nature and the skills I had learned with my hands put me in a very good shape to pursue a career as a mechanic. And of course, I loved everything about cars. And I think this inquisitive nature and my desire to really know how things work formed the bedrock of the person that I am now.
When you finally made the jump into F1, how did that happen? Was it as simple as seeing a job posting in the paper or a connection through your dad?
In prep school, I started in engineering, and it led me to a company called Adams McCall Engineering, which was run by a great guy, Kerry Adams. That’s where I was given total responsibility for restoration projects on old F1 cars, Can-Am cars, and Le Mans cars. And, you know, back then, you were just given a box of bits and told it was a Gulf Mirage, and somehow you had to turn this box of bits into that. I had to learn how to weld, had to learn how to fabricate, had to learn how to machine, and I’m self-trained on all of those things. I had some tremendously talented people who helped me, but by the time an F1 opportunity came to me, I was more than capable of making every single aspect of a car. I was capable of doing the design drawings necessary to manufacture wishbones and suspensions. I could rebuild engines and gearboxes with confidence. So, I had a pretty good grounding career—I don’t think I’ve met anybody with such strength and depth of engineering knowledge and self-learning as a mechanic-fabricator.
Then I worked next door to Tiga race cars, and during the Tiga period, I met a guy called Kenny Handkammer, and we got on brilliantly because we were about the same age, though I like to remind him he’s older than I am. One day, I bumped into him in a petrol station in High Wycombe. I said, “What are you doing?” He said, “Well, I’m working for Benetton. I said, “Well, you got any jobs going?” He said, “Do you know what? We might have.” Cut a long story short, I ended up going for a job interview at Benetton with Nigel Stepney, who was the chief mechanic there at the time. It was in the freezing winter and, uh, I managed to carry a little bit too much speed into the car park and spun my car right in front of Nigel. Somehow, the car parked itself perfectly, so I was just able to step out of it as if nothing had happened. I think I had the job from that moment on. And before I knew it, I was at Silverstone doing a tire test and then became the front-end mechanic on Roberto Moreno’s F1 car at the French Grand Prix—the first one at Magny-Cours.
So you’ve gone from being handed a box of parts and asked to rebuild an old race car, to wrenching on active F1 cars, to assembling championship-winning teams, and now, you must deal with every aspect of running a team; the hiring, the firing, budgets, politics. These are drastically different environments for someone who, at heart, is a very hands-on, self-taught person. How do you cope with that?
It’s been an advantage, honestly, because I’ve been around since 1991. I’m one of these people who are open to change and embrace change—it’s never held any fear for me. I’ve enjoyed myself working through the ranks. I once had a very good conversation with Pat Symonds about my career aspirations and where I see myself, and I had to make a choice at that point: go down the managerial route and the people route, or stick with the cars and the engineering that I’d loved for years. And what F1 taught me more than anything was the power of a team—and I loved that. At Benetton, when we were fighting for a championship, everyone was looking for the last scrap of performance. I can’t tell you the energy that it gives you, and it keeps you young, so I made the decision to go into a management career. I’ve never looked back, frankly.
I still love the cars. I love the architecture of them. I love the incredible creativity, the work that the engineering geniuses like Mattia Binotto can create with the right tools. But more than that, I’ve loved managing people, building teams, guiding people in their career paths, seeing them come in as a junior employee and then ending up as a senior employee. I love all of that, and I love building teams, so it’s just a bigger team to put together as team principal than it was as a sporting director or mechanic.
I recently watched an interview where you claimed to be “a happy team principal,” and added that you’ll be the “happiest team principal” once you’re wearing your Audi kit. I can’t remember the last time I heard an F1 team principal flat-out say they were happy. Frankly, most of them look haggard due to the enormous pressure that comes with the job. How do you manage this?
It all has to do with how a person’s wired up. I’m a very positive person, and I’ve been in high-pressure roles now for 30 years. There are no low-pressure roles in F1, and when you’re the chief mechanic in an F1 team and you’re doing pit stops, or when you’re the team manager and are fighting for world championships, you have to make tough decisions. The pressure is on you day in and day out to perform. I use this stress as positive energy, and if I’m enjoying myself, I like to think other people feel relaxed enough to enjoy themselves, because the bottom line is we’re in the best sport in the world. We’ve got the most extraordinary journey here on our transition into the Audi F1 project. I’m motivated by people, I’m motivated by a hugely positive, focused team that wants to deliver. Don’t get me wrong, there are moments when it doesn’t feel like that, and that’s also entirely to be expected. But I’ve always had a very positive outlook, and always believed that nothing is stopping a team from performing at its highest level except for factors that I can’t change.
As the sporting director at Red Bull, your crew accomplished two pit stop world records. You’ve said before that you can tell a lot about a team by how well the pit stops are performed. Is this great performance a direct reflection of your general purview on life and positivity—the Wheatley Effect, per se?
I think you’re shaped by the events that lead you to the position you find yourself in. I’ve enjoyed working with all my teams. I’ve enjoyed the challenge of having 22 people all perform flawlessly in the same two-second period, day after day, weekend after weekend, whether you’re pitting from P20 or P1. You know, these 22 people all have different challenges in their lives. They’ve all got different things going on. Some of them are ill, some of them are carrying an injury, but the way that they deliver a pit stop is, I think, a manifestation of how good the spirit and morale are in the team. If you feel relaxed, if you feel you can go into a pit stop and you have the backing of your team, and the right environment is created where you can thrive and where you can you can perform and not be terrified of recrimination—I think that’s a hallmark of a team. Mattia and I share the same philosophy in that respect. It’s all about the culture in the team.
Speaking of culture, what’s one thing Red Bull got absolutely perfect that you would like to replicate at Sauber, and eventually, Audi?
What I found there was that the mistakes that I made and the mistakes that I saw the organization make in those early days, I can straighten those here. Hopefully, we won’t fall into those same pitfalls because I’ve been through that journey. Everything is a journey; it wasn’t like the moment I arrived, we started winning. Christian took a long time to put that team together—we took a long time putting that team together. I think I bring renewed energy here, plus the experience of the lessons learned the hard way before. But frankly, I keep talking about the team and the power of the team. There’s not one individual here who’s going to make a difference. It’s going to have to be the entire team, the mindset of the entire team moving forward.
You mentioned Christian Horner. You’ve worked under many principals in your career, each one with a different management style. Can you name one that has deeply influenced how you approach that role now?
I’ve been tremendously fortunate in my career to work with John Barnard, Adrian Newey, Ross Brawn, Pat Symonds, Rory Byrne. I feel awful for leaving anyone out because there’ve been so many. I’ve worked with Flavio Briatore to Christian Horner; I’ve seen both ends of the spectrum. And of course, you learn from all of those experiences and those people. But fundamentally, I remain relaxed. I don’t put a facade on for TV or for anything else. I’m just myself. My goal is that people either accept me or they don’t accept me for the person that I am. Looking in everyone’s eyes on Sunday at Silverstone [after Nico Hulkenberg’s podium] was one of those, you know, life-affirming moments. I swear, I had more WhatsApp messages to deal with than my last world championship [at RBR].
Can you take me back to those last 15-20 minutes of Silverstone when Lewis Hamilton was charging after Hulkenberg for the last step of the podium? Was it agony, was it joy, were your nerves through the roof because of the changing weather?
It’s an interesting question because one of my great strengths has been this ability to remove emotion from what’s happening when I’m on the pit wall. I’m very calm in high-pressure situations. Maybe because I’m always in them. I do suspect that if I weren’t in a high-pressure situation, I would create it for myself. Actually, it was more relaxing to be in a position where you’re fighting for a podium for me because it’s my wheelhouse. So I was very calm all the way through the race.
Let’s wrap up by talking about next year. When you finally flip the switch at the end of 2025 and put down the Sauber kit and put on the Audi one, what’s going to be the biggest challenge?
We have a very ambitious target to win races and championships by the end of the decade. We have to be realistic and we’re humble about where we’re starting from and who we’re competing against. You know, Mattia worked for Ferrari for 35 years. I worked for Red Bull for 20 years. These teams have strength and depth in every single area, and it’s a monumental task that we’re on, but it’s achievable. That’ll be the biggest battle, and we’re going to do it differently and do it well. Mattia and I are completely joined in our vision for how this team’s going to look in the future.
If you look at an F1 program with 24 races at the moment, plus the testing we do, and the amount of traveling it takes, to do all that as team principal and try to look over the factory operations… [laughs and takes a deep breath]. Working for Audi is a pinch yourself moment and a career opportunity that I just couldn’t resist. On a personal level, being a car guy and having grown up watching Audi rally cars in the forest—and the Trans-Am cars and the IMSA cars—I was at the right age where flames coming out of the exhaust of an Audi were all you needed to get hooked.
Sauber currently sits seventh in the manufacturers’ championship, just one point behind cash-rich Aston Martin. More importantly, Wheatley’s new squad is only 19 points behind Williams, meaning that with some solid performances and a bit of luck, a fifth-place finish is well within reach by the end of the year. Furthermore, Hulkenberg sits ninth in the drivers’ championship, well ahead of drivers like Fernando Alonso, Carlos Sainz, Yuki Tsunoda, and others.
To wrap up our chat, I asked Wheatley something rather personal and dear to his heart: his pug, Lola. Earlier this year, during his relocation road trip from the U.K. to the team’s HQ in Switzerland, Wheatley shared several photos of Lola riding shotgun in his vintage Porsche. I am now one of several people asking him to bring her out to a race weekend and join the other famous F1 pups.
“We have to speak to her agent because she’s more popular than I am,” Wheatley laughed. “Lola’s been at our side for over 11 years now; she’s a big part of the family. We love her to death. She’s becoming a bit of a madam as she gets older, and she knows what she wants and what she doesn’t want. As far as her coming to a track, oh, I don’t know about her getting all the publicity and Mattia and I not getting any.”
Contact the author at jerry@thedrive.com
As deputy editor, Jerry draws on a decade of industry experience and a lifelong passion for motorsports to guide The Drive’s short- and long-term coverage.