What happened overnight in the Formula 1 command centers at the beginning of the week was not a simple chair move. More like an earthquake on the executive job market. Roughly as if seven clubs in the Bundesliga had exchanged those responsible. It has never happened before that 40 percent of the racing teams in the premier class of motorsport have new bosses, so concentrated in terms of time.
It’s not just faces and posts that are being moved. The surprising changes and substitutions also bring new requirement profiles – and could change the motorsport landscape forever.
One after the other: Jost Capito, 64, was retired with little feeling by the investors of the Williams racing team, and the head of technology he had hired went with him. As expected, and with greater sadness among the Swiss workforce, Alfa Romeo announced the promotion of Frédéric Vasseur to the hot seat at Ferrari, where the Frenchman will take up the post as general manager on January 9. A nice code word for cleaners after predecessor Mattia Binotto resigned before he was kicked out.
Within three years, Seidl has formed the traditional McLaren racing team into a rising force
The biggest surprise of the castling followed when McLaren announced the departure of his team boss Andreas Seidl from Passau. Seidl, 46, will be replaced at the traditional British racing team, which he has transformed from a relic of a glorious past into a rising force in three years, by the previous technology manager Andrea Stella, who was once an engineer for Michael Schumacher during the glorious days at Ferrari. In fact, Seidl’s departure from McLaren outshines the announcement of a new boss at Scuderia – which has probably never happened before.
Seidl, who is considered one of the smartest, most charming and, above all, most honest managers in the Formula 1 paddock, jumps a few career levels higher – he doesn’t become team boss, but CEO at Sauber Motorsport AG in the Zurich Oberland. The group of companies that is to write a new chapter in German motorsport history from 2026 under the Audi name.
The Ingolstadt-based company will gradually acquire the majority of Sauber, but formally congratulated the Sauber owner Finn Rausing after Seidl’s commitment. The Swede, who saved the team five years ago with his Tetrapak royalties and appointed Vasseur as governor, is guaranteed not to have decided the important personnel without Placet from Ingolstadt. The fact that Seidl can move seamlessly from Woking in the UK to Switzerland, where he had previously worked as a BMW engineer in a managerial position, also has to do with the open cards he played with McLaren boss Zak Brown.
Seidl had already explained to the team owner from the USA in the summer that he would not be extending his contract, which expired at the end of 2025, but wanted to face new challenges. It was immediately clear to Brown that Seidl’s future would have four letters and four rings. By the time Ferrari went after Vasseur, it was already clear that his release would be a formality.
The new Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur is considered a skilled politician
Seidl’s job of forming a task force that corresponds to the Ingolstadt parade factory, the supercomputer and the world-class wind tunnel comes with a similar pressure as the accomplished engineer and string puller Vasseur will feel in Maranello. With the difference that the Bavarian has a little more time to build new structures and a different perspective.
Ferrari’s CEO Benedetto Vigna has just repeated the unforgiving Formula 1 wisdom that second is first to lose. And the Scuderia was second, or even third, for long enough. Vasseur’s most valuable ally will therefore be driver Charles Leclerc, whom he discovered and trained for Formula 1. Whether it’s actually an advantage for a decade and a half as the first boss of the Sports Management to act that does not come from Ferrari’s own ranks will prove itself. Vasseur is considered a shrewd politician, he already has plenty of knowledge about the rope teams under the jumping horse: most recently he was a leasing customer in the engine department at Alfa Romeo, as a manager of young drivers he was also able to establish close ties, including with Jean Todt and his family. The word of Todt, the father of the most glorious Ferrari era at the turn of the millennium, still carries weight in Maranello, his son is also conveniently manager of Leclerc. A small Gallic village in the Roman Empire of Renn.
The new Ferrari boss Frédéric Vasseur promises that he will “deliver for our Tifosi all over the world”.
(Photo: David Davies/dpa)
Vasseur will no longer be able to switch and rule according to his own will, as he did last time with the Alfa Romeo racing squad, he must bring calm, motivation and success to the insecure Ferrari team at the same time. But the 54-year-old could hardly resist the allure of fame and a whopping salary increase. Of course he sees the job in the Via Enzo Ferrari as the crowning glory of his career and promises that he will “deliver for our Tifosi all over the world”.
The team boss carousel will probably continue to turn. Mattia Binotto is on the market, and Jost Capito doesn’t have to retire either. Andreas Seidl is also urgently looking for a man for day-to-day business at the pit wall to make his work easier. Above all, however, the personal details of Vasseur and Seidl show that the important tasks in the billion-euro Formula 1 business also lie beyond the pit lanes. Mercedes co-owner Toto Wolff and Red Bull head of operations Christian Horner, who have been arguing for the award of the world championship titles among themselves for a decade, have long since fulfilled the multitasking tasks that CEOs perform in companies. The 50-year-old Austrian Wolff was the one who redefined the job of the racing team principal and introduced modern management methods.
When the images from Vasseur and Seidl’s personnel files spread on social media, the Silver Arrows’ communications department also contributed a photo of Toto Wolff, who is incidentally a long-time friend of his future opponent Vasseur, beaming with the Mercedes star : “Breaking news – we have nothing to announce, so here is a picture of our boss.” Anyone who thought that the stars sat alone in the cockpits didn’t understand the Formula 1 business.
