{"id":10752,"date":"2025-07-20T15:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10752\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T15:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:19:10","slug":"jonathan-wheatley-reveals-moment-that-triggered-red-bull-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/10752\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Wheatley reveals moment that triggered Red Bull exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sauber Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley has revealed a moment during last year\u2019s Formula 1<\/a> season that triggered his eventual exit from Red Bull.<\/p>\n

Wheatley was announced as the Swiss squad\u2019s new boss last August and will lead the team into its regeneration next year as the first-ever Audi F1 team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 58-year-old had previously been Red Bull\u2019s Sporting Director, but was part of a mass exodus of personnel across 2024, which included Adrian Newey, who moved to Aston Martin.<\/p>\n

Wheatley has since been overseeing Sauber\u2019s initial early-season struggles into midfield challengers, recently culminating with Nico Hulkenberg\u2019s first-ever podium at Silverstone.<\/p>\n

He revealed that media speculation in the Spring of last year was what helped to prompt his eventual exit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, there was an article that came out in Miami last year,\u201d Wheatley told RacingNews365. \u201cI wasn\u2019t happy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a very, very low media profile at the time, on purpose and then suddenly my name was in all the papers, which created a difficult situation at work.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what it did do, there were then a lot of approaches and you start thinking about it [leaving] then, because people are obviously very interested in where you could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess also my mindset there was, I\u2019d signed a lock-in contract and I would honour that from start to finish,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not the sort of person who signs a contract and then tries to wheedle my way out of it because there\u2019s a slightly different offer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I commit to a team, I commit to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSixteen years at Benetton\/Renault, 19 years at Red Bull and I have no intention of leaving here [Sauber\/Audi] either, so that opened up a lot of conversations with many teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AudiWheatley will lead Audi into F1 for the first time<\/p>\n

\u2018Excitement\u2019 of Audi project the deciding factor in Wheatley\u2019s career move<\/p>\n

Wheatley is overseeing the transition from Sauber to Audi, which is entailing an extension of its Hinwil base, which the German marque is keeping.<\/p>\n

It is also commencing the usage of a new Technology Centre at Bicester Motion, ensuring that the team will have three different locations for its operations.<\/p>\n

Wheatley explained that he had talks with different teams about a potential switch, but Audi\u2019s plans for the future were what swayed his eventual decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t need to leave the UK to further my career, but none of them came close to how exciting the Audi project is,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still get excited about it now. It\u2019s still a pinch-yourself-moment when you realise that next year there\u2019s going to be a complete transformation. You won\u2019t recognise how different it looks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd to be part of that journey again, like I was in my previous one from the very beginning, I can\u2019t tell you how exciting it is. Nothing could have come close.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 How Jonathan Wheatley\u2019s detail-driven approach is leading Sauber F1 revival<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sauber Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley has revealed a moment during last year\u2019s Formula 1 season that triggered his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10753,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,10548,3014,82,10549],"class_list":{"0":"post-10752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-redbull","14":"tag-sauber","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-wheatley"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}