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Mattia Binotto in, Andreas Seidl (and Oliver Hoffmann) out. Something of this magnitude has felt like it's been coming at Audi’s Formula 1 team for a couple of months now.
The on-track performance hasn't improved enough in the short-term for Sauber, the team Audi is buying, and there have been issues getting long-term driver target Carlos Sainz to commit. It has looked for a while like he would rather go to projects that are, on paper at least, lesser projects than the Audi works team - a major public vote of no confidence in the project.
With some rumoured wrangling behind the scenes over who should really be in charge, it looked like it might be a case of Audi having to stand behind one of Seidl (Sauber CEO and Audi F1 team CEO) or Hoffmann (chairman of Sauber's board of directors who had overall responsibility of the programme). The fact it's both of them going is a big surprise, as is the fact it's both of them making way for Binotto to join as both chief operating officer and chief technical officer.
This is, Audi says, all about streamlining the process - and one of the positives of Binotto having both roles is that on the team side there will be a slightly clearer chain of command.
But it remains to be seen exactly how broad his remit is going to be, because those are two distinct areas with very different responsibilities. Binotto will need people to delegate to. So, will there be a team principal, with current Aston Martin boss Mike Krack linked to the organisation by German publication Auto Motor und Sport? And what happens on the technical leadership front, given technical director James Key was emphatically a Seidl hire?
Such questions are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the uncertainty this kind of change brings. Then there's another one - of how much of a disrupting factor this is 18 months out from an Audi works team being on the grid for the very first time.
Everything has been planned over the last 24 months for a Seidl-led team to go in a Seidl-led direction. Binotto will want to do things his way, and that's going to take time to implement. It's months and months down the road before this project moves out of Seidl's image and becomes more in Binotto's.
It's an aggressive move, but clearly one Audi has deemed necessary to save a project in trouble, and that had looked somewhat drifting and not joined up enough between the Audi and Sauber sides. It’s been rudderless in terms of addressing the on-track performance. Sauber's progress has not been quick enough or clear enough with the changes Audi’s played a part in supporting.
Recently, Alessandro Alunni Bravi - the often-forgotten team representative but someone who is undoubtedly aware of whatever confusion and inadequacies might exist at Sauber - has said openly that more should have been achieved with what's been invested and improved in the team.
There's been a big misstep this season: Sauber hasn't delivered to the potential anyone involved wants or expects, and is the only point-less team on the grid. Clearly, Audi's reacting to that. And whether that’s really Seidl’s fault or not, the responsibility has presumably been put at his door, and Hoffmann’s.
For all the short-term pain that any Binotto-led reshaping might entail, it's much better doing this now than to have any doubts and try to redo everything 18 months down the line, or two years down the line, when in 2026 the Audi works team isn't performing at an acceptable level.
Such action shows two things: that Audi is willing to be decisive, and felt its F1 team needed a big course correction. The latter is problematic given it has already had two years to start shaping its team for the better.
Audi’s only silver lining is that there is still time to find a solution - and it desperately needs these personnel changes to be the start of that.
