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?
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.