Red Bull Racing earlier today released a statement saying Sporting Director Jonathan Wheatley is leavig the team at the end of 2024, as he heads to a new challenge, taking up the role of Team Principal with the Audi F1 Project.
Weirdly enough however Audi has not put out a statement nor answered journalists’ queries yet. As Tobi Grüner noted, there is no official comment yet from Hinwil or Germany.
Apparently RBR has a history of doing this as back in the day, Horner told press that Sebastian Vettel would leave the team for Ferrari while the italian team wasnt ready fo announce that yet.
What do you think happened here?
Shithousery is in Red Bulls DNA.
No class whatsoever.
They also announced Seb going to Ferrari before Seb or Ferrari did.
Just strikes me as petty to your outgoing driver, and petty, perhaps even unsportsmanlike, to your rival team.
I don’t know of any other team that’s done this, certainly not recently.
Remember that time Alpine signed Oscar?
Oh that’s right, they didn’t.
I view Alpine screwing with Piastri leading to McLaren taking advantage of it and hiring a great F2 driver to be a very, very different situation.
A driver and senior team person leaving and having RB react in this way is very different to Alpine deciding to be twatty with Piastri then come to regret it.
And so begins the fall of Red Bull Racing. Any bets Max leaves F1 at the end of next year, or shortly thereafter?
Any bets Max leaves F1 at the end of next year, or shortly thereafter?
Toto has the contract printed out and has been trying to facetime Max.
Max I’ve sent you an email with the diagrams
If he left at the end of this season who on earth would Red Bull sign as nobody of consequence is available? It would end up being KMag and Checo at this point.
They would be left trying to buy someone out of their contract, very expensive and far from certain to work.
Buy out a Carlos from Williams? That’s a great question. Ferrari, Merc, McLaren have some great succession plans for a main driver leaving. RBR feels like it has Max and only Max
I think it would actually be the end of RBR in Formula 1.
Audi’s statement seems to have gone up a few hours after the announcement by Red Bull: https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/press-releases/jonathan-wheatley-will-be-team-principal-of-the-future-audi-f1-factory-team-16134
Autospot op-ed says this is a more significant departure than Newey leaving: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/ben-hunt-red-bull-will-feel-wheatley-loss-more-than-neweys-departure/10641153/
Apparently his departure was rumored since May? My first time hearing about that.
I think the rumours where always told to the public as “high ranking RBR personnel sending CVs around”. I hadnt read a specific “Wheatley might leave” story either.
If it is true Audi should have been ready, if it isn’t they should take some tweeter classes from Oscar.
