Aston Martin, Audi downplay shock Jonathan Wheatley F1 move as "speculation"

Reports of a shock move to Aston Martin by Audi Formula 1 team principal Jonathan Wheatley have been dismissed as “speculation” by both teams.

However momentum around the story continued to gather on Thursday afternoon, with some high-level F1 paddock sources suggesting that it will happen, while team insiders in both camps insisted that they knew nothing about it.

Aston Martin denied the suggestion, telling Crash.net that “the team will not be engaging in media speculation about its senior leadership team. Adrian Newey continues to lead the team as team principal and managing technical partner.”

Audi echoed that line, stating “we are aware of the recent media reports. There is no official update from our side at this point in time and we do not comment on speculation.”

One possible scenario is that Aston has sounded Wheatley out in some form of preliminary discussion, and the news of their contact has broken before any decision had been made.

As with the driver market, such contact with bosses of rival teams is not uncommon.

For example, it’s understood that Flavio Briatore indicated an interest in hiring his former Enstone colleague Wheatley for Alpine before settling on Steve Nielsen.

On the face of it, Wheatley would seem to have no reason to think about leaving for Aston just one year into the job.

His departure from his previous role as Red Bull's sporting director was announced by the Milton Keynes team on 1 August 2024, and he started at what was then still Sauber on 1 April last year.

The Swiss team made good progress over the course of the season, with Wheatley working alongside Mattia Binotto.

The transition to the Audi identity in 2026 has gone better than many observers had expected, with the R26 making Q3 and scoring points first time out in Australia, although two non-starts in the first two races were costly.

While Wheatley appears to be doing well, the prospect of working alongside his former Red Bull Racing colleague Newey and returning to his UK home base could appeal. There may also be some question of how things are working out with Binotto.

If such a move was to go ahead, then Wheatley would presumably take over the team principal responsibilities currently held by Newey, even if he didn’t necessarily get the actual job title.

Given the turmoil around the team and its current struggles adding a senior person to the management mix to take some load off Newey, allowing him to focus on his original role as managing technical partner, would seem to make sense.

However in Australia Newey downplayed the suggestion that he was being stretched too thinly.

He said: “I think my title of team principal, the difference compared to how I operated, for instance, at Red Bull, is that at Red Bull I was doing a very similar role but confined to the engineering department, In this role it’s the whole company, so it’s a bigger role in that sense, but in many ways it’s an extension of what I’ve been doing for many years.”