View: Chaos reigns at Audi

      Rumors that Aston Martin is looking for a specialist to replace Adrian Newey as team principal emerged just three days ago. Almost immediately, the name Jonathan Wheatley came up in this context, who just last week in Shanghai said he felt "a sense of pride in what we have achieved in the 11 months I have been working at Audi F1."

      But today it became known about his departure from the factory team of the German automaker, which was created based on Sauber. It is not surprising that this news was received particularly painfully in Switzerland.

      Here are a few excerpts from the text that has just appeared in the Swiss tabloid Blick, with one of the paragraphs preceded by the subheading "Chaos reigns at Audi":

      "The old story repeats itself: contracts in Formula 1 are often worth no more than the paper they are written on. What 'loyalty' means in this circus is hardly known... In short, selfish interests always remain a priority. And Wheatley now also has to live with such an accusation...

      It was long known that disagreements had arisen within the company between Binotto and Wheatley regarding the boundaries of their authority. However, all this was happening behind the scenes, and publicly Audi denied that there was a power struggle within the team...

      It was immediately clear that Adrian Newey's appointment as team principal was a mistake. This genius of aerodynamics, who often could not even find his way to his hotel without assistance, had only one thing left to do: find a suitable successor.

      Finally, such a person has been found. In his defense, Wheatley can only say that he does not enjoy living on the shores of Lake Zug, although he always insisted that he liked it here. Therefore, he is returning with his family to the island of Great Britain, where Aston Martin's base is located in Silverstone – just 20 km from Milton Keynes, where he worked before...

      And Audi is once again starting the search for a specialist suitable for the role of team principal. Andreas Seidl was fired from Sauber more than two years ago, and before that, he had to leave McLaren. Regardless of how events will unfold, Audi will first have to overcome the consequences of everything that is happening now, and this situation will set the team back.

      Gernot Döllner, the head of the German company, can no longer afford to make mistakes regarding personnel appointments. By the way, here’s another curious fact: in the last three months, Audi has already changed three heads of the press service..."