We’re roughly a year and a half from Audi showing up in full force on the F1 grid, and it already seems like a mess.
It was announced on Tuesday, July 23, that Mattia Binotto will be effectively taking over the Audi F1 project. Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann, who had led the team as the CEO of Sauber (Seidl) and the Chairman of the Board (Hoffmann), are no longer with the company.
The tea leaves indicate that Audi chose neither side in a power struggle between Seidl and Hoffmann and instead chose a third party.
All well and good until you look at Binotto’s resume.
Ferrari under Binotto was such an absolute joke that people still see the team as a bunch of clowns. Binotto’s Ferrari was entirely unprepared and would routinely fail to adapt strategically, even when graced with the fastest car.
It’s solid that Binotto is an engineer by trade, and his oversight should at least be recognized for how fast the Ferrari was at the start of the current car era in 2022. But, having a fast car is not the only thing a team needs to be fast, and Binotto falls short in most other categories.
In addition, Ferrari’s speed fell to the wayside as the season progressed, and the team struggled to find any balance in managing tire wear.
The hiring makes even less sense, even if you choose to throw Binotto’s record aside and have faith he can build something new at Audi.
Audi has already made a number of hires under Seidl that Binotto will now have to either work with or cycle out, wasting more time on a project that already seems behind schedule.
The most notable of these will be Nico Hulkenberg. Seidl hired the German to drive for the team mostly thanks to their previous relationship in sports cars, which enabled them to win the 2015 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Now that Seidl is out of the picture, Hulkenberg is going into the team totally blind.
“That was obviously a bit of a wave, a bit of a shock,” Hulkenberg said on Thursday, July 25 on Belgium Grand Prix media day as quoted by ESPN. “But now, obviously, it’s back to business. And I still look forward to join that project, and to make it a successful story with or without the fact that two people that were closely involved signing me are not there anymore.
“[…] But I was informed, the day of the announcement about the group’s decision by [Audi CEO] Gernot Donner himself. It’s the group’s decision that they want to change moving forward.”
Hulkenberg had a positive public spin on the news. “The fact that they take action means that they’re very much involved and invested in it and hands on. And that’s, I think, good and positive news.”
But it’s still going to be an entirely different environment for the veteran driver than what he was expecting. And Binotto may well decide that Hulkenberg isn’t in his plans at some point and release him from the team before his contract is up.
When you get new people in to run a team, sometimes they are going to want their own people. That’s unconfirmed in this case obviously, but Hulkenberg is still fairly vulnerable to it if it is.
Speaking of Binotto’s own people, Carlos Sainz is still out wandering the silly season wasteland. Signing Sainz has been a priority for Audi almost since they joined the sport. It would be interesting to see how Sainz’s thinking surrounding Audi has changed since the Binotto news was announced.
He’s been diplomatic about it when asked in the paddock this weekend. But he also wasn’t jumping up and down as if it affected his upcoming decision positively. Binotto hired Sainz at Ferrari to take over for Sebastian Vettel in 2021, a move that worked wonders for Sainz’s career. But Binotto’s Ferrari was so bad with strategy that Sainz had to basically be his own strategist at times and tell the team what to do over the radio.
It’s really incredible looking at this Audi situation, where they have basically hired a rodeo clown to run their team, and this Alpine situation, in which they let their team principal move away from F1 in their latest move since Flavio Briatore was rehired by the team. And how FOM will turn around and tell Andretti Global that they are seriously concerned that they would not be viably competitive.
After all, there may not be enough clowns on that team.
About the author
Michael has watched NASCAR for 20 years and regularly covered the sport from 2013-2021, and also formerly covered the SRX series from 2021-2023. He now covers the FIA Formula 1 World Championship, the NASCAR Xfinity Series, and road course events in the NASCAR Cup Series.
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While Ferrari was a mess under Binotto, Ferrari has often struggled to find success in spite of the speed of their cars. Long before Binotto came to Ferrari, their pit stops were often a chaotic, unorganized mess, and strategy wise they still aren’t on the same level as Mercedes, Red Bull or McLaren.
Binotto does seem to be a strange choice for team principle, about the only worse choice might have been Steiner, but let’s be honest, Ferrari has often struggled to run their race teams in a professional manner.