Aston Martin's season has been disastrous, with the team still without points and its drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, still at the bottom of the Drivers' Championship rankings after this weekend's round in Japan. It had been a surprise when the outfit’s legendary new designer and technical chief, Adrian Newey, had also been given the role of team principal after a merry-go-round of what proved to be temporary previous incumbents.

Will Jonathan Wheatley end up at Aston Martin?

Newey clearly has never had the required skillset to fill the role, and, as a result, it’s no surprise that Aston Martin has removed him from the position. Just over a week before the start of the Japanese race weekend, it had become apparent that the outfit was perhaps seeking to attract the services of Audi’s team principal, Jonathan Wheatley, who had previously for many years worked very successfully as Red Bull’s sporting director alongside Newey and team principal Christian Horner, helping the team achieve multiple world titles with Sebastian Vettel and then Max Verstappen. The following day, three press releases dropped into my inbox almost simultaneously, one from the Audi parent company, one from its Formula 1 team subsidiary and one from Lawrence Stroll, the owner of Aston Martin F1. The two from Audi basically advised that its team principal, Wheatley, was leaving “with immediate effect” and “for personal reasons” and that its head of F1 Project, Mattia Binotto, would add the role of team principal to his current duties as at least a temporary measure. Binotto is a likeable 56-year-old Italian who was formerly a team principal for Ferrari before being dismissed in 2022.

It’s not difficult to see how a renewed Newey/Wheatley pairing at Aston Martin could potentially work well, although Stroll is also equally aware of just how powerful the trio of Newey, Horner and Wheatley proved to be at Red Bull. The press release from Stroll referred to Newey’s design and technical strengths and said that, for now, at least, unlike all other F1 outfits, his team was happy to operate without a team principal and made no direct reference to Wheatley, simply referring to “current speculation”.

All part of F1 politics, of course, and it left me guessing just when a subsequent press release might arrive from Aston Martin, announcing the appointment of Wheatley as team principal, even if his start date might well be impacted by a period of post-Audi gardening leave, which could even last for up to a year. Or might Horner also come into the equation with Audi, if not Aston Martin? One of Horner’s key desires is to have an equity stake in a team, like Stroll, Newey and Mercedes’ Wolff, rather than merely be an employee.

It’s also difficult not to feel sorry for Audi after Wheatley had opted to leave Red Bull for a first-ever promotion to team principal level offered by the German outfit when still racing as Sauber. The transition initially worked out well, but the Audi Group’s senior management, headed by its CEO, Gernot Döllner, has understandably now been angered by Wheatley’s desire to leave so soon after the rookie team’s impressive start to the new season, seeking to move elsewhere so early. The fact that a move to Aston Martin would involve being located back in the UK rather than at one of Audi’s European bases in Hinwil, Switzerland, is no doubt a personal aspect of all this for Wheatley, but he was well aware of such issues when choosing to leave Red Bull to gladly take the Audi job.



Elsewhere in the Formula 1 pit lane, Mercedes has announced a change to its management structure, creating a new role of deputy team principal in support of Wolff. Bradley Lord, the team’s long-time chief communications officer and the usual stand-in for Wolff at race weekends when the Austrian isn’t present, is the man to fill this new job, although it basically reflects what has been happening in practice for some time already. Keen followers of F1 will have long noticed Lord standing at Wolff’s shoulder in the Mercedes pit garages during Grands Prix.

Meanwhile, Mercedes’ 19-year-old Italian rising star, Kimi Antonelli, who had claimed his first F1 victory in Shanghai, chose to make a surprise appearance at a meeting of the 300-strong Tifoseria Ayrton Senna Italia group at Imola before heading to Bologna airport for his flight to Tokyo and was given a lengthy standing ovation. Antonelli thrilled the attendees as he explained how Senna has always been one of his racing heroes, and all present were aware that the young star in their midst could potentially be challenging George Russell for a first world title himself this season in only his second year in Formula 1 if further strong results follow, assisted, for now at least, by Mercedes clearly having the best car on the grid.

During the weekend between the Chinese and Japanese Formula 1 rounds, most drivers were understandably enjoying some downtime at home before heading off to Japan, but not Red Bull’s multiple world champion, Verstappen, who instead preferred to go racing at Germany’s famous Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit. During his racing career, Sir Jackie Stewart had christened the track as “die grüne Hölle” (the green hell) due to its demanding nature and ever-present danger.

Behind the wheel of his Winward Racing Mercedes-AMG GT3 EVO sportscar, Verstappen produced a racing masterclass to claim the NLS2 pole position almost two seconds clear of the rest of the field, and he and his co-drivers, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon, subsequently won the race comfortably, reaching the chequered flag almost a minute clear of everyone else. Verstappen’s presence was a real positive for the sport as a whole, as it generated massive global interest in what would normally have simply been a niche event within the motorsport world calendar.

However, the victory celebrations were soon cut short after post-race scrutineering revealed that the team had used seven sets of tyres, one more than the six allowed under the regulations, and, as such, was disqualified. A simple, but crucial mistake, from which the team will learn ahead of the major 24-hour race at the same venue in mid-May, when Verstappen will again be racing in his Red Bull-liveried Mercedes.