Following the departure of Fred Vasseur who left Hinwil to become a team principal at Ferrari, Sauber adopted an unconventional three-man management structure. Alessandro Alunni Bravi has acted as team representative — speaking on behalf of the team at launches, to F1 and the FIA as well as sponsors — while Xevi Pujolar has been the team’s head of track engineering and Beat Zehnder its sporting director.
Theoretically, all three men should be able to retain their roles, while Seidl and Hoffmann oversee the team as a whole. Although it’s unclear as to how Bravi and Hoffman will work in tandem with one another as they seemingly have similar responsibilities.
Much of the rest of the staff is likely to stay the same, as Sauber’s ongoing partnership with Ferrari — who supply itwith power units and gearboxes — is set to end ahead of the 2026 campaign. Audi will then step up to fill the void, with testing of its 2026 F1 engine already well underway. A prototype was even tested at the Auto Shanghai automobile show last year.
Where will Audi’s base of operations be?
The Audi F1 team is likely to be split over two campuses: one at Hinwil in Switzerland and the other at Neuberg in Germany.
Sauber has been based in Hinwil since the 1970s and the site been gradually built upon over the years. A major addition came in 2011, after a lucrative partnership with BMW allowed the team to build a full-scale wind tunnel — a state of the art facility.
A separate 3,000-square-metre factory at Neuberg has also been built, which will focus on developing Audi’s power unit. 260 personnel are currently based at the facility and are a blend of existing Audi staff alongside newly hired experts.
Who will drive for the Audi F1 team?
Out of a seat at Ferrari, but could Carlos Sainz be the driver to lead Audi in 2026?
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As Audi’s entry into F1 looms, speculation over who will sit in the cockpit has naturally gathered pace.
After failing to hang onto his seat at Ferrari, Carlos Sainz has become a rather obvious front-runner, as aside from being a talent worthy of a front-running seat, his father Carlos Sainz Sr also has a close relationship with Audi. The former world rally champion recently won the Dakar Rally at the wheel of an overhauled Audi RS Q e-tron.
Given the form of Sauber’s current driver line-up — not helped by the car’s pace — neither Valtteri Bottas nor Zhou Guanyu, can be certain of being on Audi’s radar. But with a bisy silly season approaching in 2024, Seidl will be watching with a keen eye to see who could possibly lead Audi to a fast start upon their F1 debut.