{"id":582825,"date":"2026-04-03T12:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582825\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T12:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T12:06:10","slug":"martin-brundle-identifies-aston-martin-problem-while-backing-jonathan-wheatley-move","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/582825\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Brundle identifies Aston Martin problem while backing Jonathan Wheatley move"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/driver\/martin-brundle\/585\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Martin Brundle<\/a> believes empliying Jonathan Wheatley would be a &#8220;smart move&#8221; for Aston Martin, though he cautioned that the Silverstone outfit must stabilise its management structure.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsport.com\/team\/audi\/49022\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Audi<\/a> confirmed on 20 March that Wheatley had left his role as team principal with immediate effect due to personal reasons. While the 58-year-old is yet to confirm his next move, Motorsport understands that the Briton is set to join Aston Martin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/8n45wLFIKk0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Sky Sports F1 Show<\/a>, Brundle admitted that the move initially caught him off guard, despite hearing paddock whispers earlier in the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve had such a revolving door of management at Aston Martin, haven&#8217;t they? And some curious decisions I think they&#8217;ve taken about who does what and who&#8217;s in charge,&#8221; the former driver explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Really curious, frankly, just observing it and knowing some of the people involved. I&#8217;m going to assume yes [Jonathan will move to Aston Martin]. Jonathan&#8217;s a mate, but he doesn&#8217;t want to talk at the moment because I&#8217;m sure he can&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think he would have abandoned the Audi project and moving the family to Switzerland and all of that lightly. So let&#8217;s assume when they&#8217;ve got through the negotiations or the gardening leave or whatever&#8217;s involved here that he will end up at Aston Martin.<\/p>\n<p>   <img decoding=\"async\" draggable=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/jonathan-wheatley-team-princip.jpg\" alt=\"Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal of Audi F1 Team\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" loading=\"lazy\"\/> <\/p>\n<p class=\"title\">Jonathan Wheatley, Team Principal of Audi F1 Team<\/p>\n<p class=\"photographer\">Photo by: Andy Hone\/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Adrian Newey knows him incredibly well from the Red Bull days, of course. And I think Jonathan&#8217;s pragmatism and hands-on approach would glue some things together there. I think it would be a smart move.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not something I picked up on from him at all, but maybe moving back to the UK appeals to him and paying some tax,&#8221; he laughed. &#8220;But yeah, that&#8217;s a curious one. I didn&#8217;t see that one coming from Jonathan if I&#8217;m honest, although I was told twice in Melbourne that that was going to happen, actually.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Jonathan would be a good catch for them. But they need to settle down and just stick with something. They look like a Premier League football team at the moment, just constantly changing who&#8217;s in charge. And then what happens then?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Everybody just runs for cover in the team and keeps their heads down because they don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s happening next, who they report to, what the strategy is, or whatever. So it&#8217;s really a difficult situation for them all around.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            We want your opinion!<\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-auto\">What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"#\" class=\"ms-link text-link font-bold\">Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"mt-1 text-body\">&#8211; The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst Martin Brundle believes empliying Jonathan Wheatley would be a &#8220;smart&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[8541,64,63,817,277594,813,816,107978,7983,22298,285455,85,1511],"class_list":{"0":"post-582825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-aston-martin-racing","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-f1-japanese-grand-prix","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-japanese-gp","16":"tag-jonathan-wheatley","17":"tag-martin-brundle","18":"tag-martin-brundle-identifies-aston-martin-problem-while-backing-jonathan-wheatley-move","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-trendingteam"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=582825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}