The key factors behind F1’s Premier League-style managerial revolving door

The round of leadership changes announced during the off-season underlined the degree to which Formula 1 abhors stasis. But even seasoned observers were shocked to see the broom sweep through Ferrari, Williams, Sauber and McLaren.

Going into the first race of the new season only four team principals hold the role they did in 2021. Toto Wolff, Christian Horner, Guenther Steiner and Franz Tost will find themselves sitting with some familiar faces in unfamiliar shirts, plus a couple fresh to the challenge of running a Formula 1 team.

Christian Horner, Formula 1’s most experienced team boss, may well reflect on the changes he has seen since joining Red Bull as a fresh-faced 31-year old in 2005. Then it was the likes of Ron Dennis, Frank Williams and Eddie Jordan whom he joined in team meetings. Now it’s going to be Andrea Stella, James Vowles and Mike Krack.

These leadership changes are entirely due to the way the teams are now owned and structured. The true power lies with the team owners who can hire and fire according to the degree of support and scrutiny which they apply to their team principals. The exception is Toto Wolff, the only boss who co-owns the team he runs.

Everyone else is essentially hired, although some are rather more embedded with their owners than others. Six of the team principals have a direct boss within the structure of their team. Someone, a CEO or chairman, to whom they report.

“There are some in F1 who would rather not be team principal because it means you can avoid the flak when things go wrong, take the credit when things go well,” said one former team boss.

It’s also a trend for team principals to be engineers, an indication that owners and their CEOs now see the team principal role as being essentially technical in nature. We need to go back 25 years to pinpoint the shift, to early 1998.

Team owner managers like Ron Dennis and Ken Tyrrell used to be all-powerful, but their grip soon slipped

Photo by: Sutton Images

Ken Tyrrell had just sold the Tyrrell Racing Organisation to former ski instructor Craig Pollock’s brainchild, British American Racing – and, somewhat inevitably, they fell out. Ken quit before the season started. Tyrrell would later morph into BAR, Honda, Brawn and the Mercedes team of today.

PLUS: How Tyrrell became a racing Rubik’s cube as it faded out of F1

In November of the same year Jordan Grand Prix was part-sold to a private equity company, Warburg Pincus, while Jackie Stewart would shortly raise the ‘for sale’ sign and offload Stewart Grand Prix to the Ford Motor Company at the end of 1999. That, of course, gave birth to Jaguar Racing, forerunner of Red Bull Racing.

While some owner-managers, such as Ron Dennis and Frank Williams, would hold on well into the noughties, the die was cast as corporate investment extended its reach and influence. Team principals were no longer all-powerful.

“The team principal’s role is to attract the best talent, to motivate and create a positive culture within which people can flourish. Stability is important because once you have a process that works you can also have decent succession planning” Neil Martin

Jaguar Racing’s team principals had a shorter shelf life than a set of ultra-soft tyres: the leadership turnstile rapidly spun through Wolfgang Reitzle, Neil Ressler, Bobby Rahal, Niki Lauda, John Hogan and Tony Purnell. Each talented but none given the time, money or freedom to deliver. It’s a lesson not all have learned.

Ferrari goes into 2023 with its fifth team principal in a decade. Stefano Domenicali was followed by Marco Mattiaci, Mauricio Arrivabene, Mattia Binotto and now Frederic Vasseur. It’s unlikely that Ferrari chairman John Elkann, scion of the Agnelli dynasty, takes any pleasure from the Scuderia emulating premiership football where the average tenure for managers stands at 2.2 seasons.

Stability doesn’t guarantee success, of course. But in the right hands it creates the opportunity for a team to invest in the right areas, attract the best talent and develop a winning process.

“Performance is fundamentally defined by the process which the team uses to reduce lap time via a mix of coherent modelling involving vehicle dynamics, aerodynamics and the simulator,” says Neil Martin, former head of strategy at McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari.

“The team principal’s role is to attract the best talent, to motivate and create a positive culture within which people can flourish. Stability is important because once you have a process that works you can also have decent succession planning. Staff changes will have less impact.”

Jaguar had several bosses take charge in the Ford-owned team's brief tenure, each without success

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

Ferrari had a winning process in place during the Michael Schumacher era under the leadership of Jean Todt, Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne. Brawn imported that approach to win both world championships with his eponymous team in 2009, establishing the foundations for Mercedes with significant input from Bob Bell. With Bell and his successors, Paddy Lowe and James Allison, the team demonstrated that Mercedes’ systems worked.

PLUS: How getting sacked gave Mercedes F1’s tech wizard lasting benefits

Meanwhile Ferrari has been unable to overcome the dominance unleashed by Red Bull and Mercedes since achieving its now-distant constructors’ titles in 2007 and 2008, the low points being winless seasons in 2014, 2020 and 2021. Binotto’s success in returning the Scuderia to winning form last year seemed like a breakthrough, yet Ferrari’s CEO Benedetto Vigna described second place in the constructors’ championship as “first of the losers” (a sentence once also uttered by Ron Dennis).

The reliability problems which afflicted the Ferrari F1-75, notably when Charles Leclerc was leading in Spain and Azerbaijan, were compounded by public strategy errors in Monaco, Silverstone and Hungary. When the F1 circus arrived in Monza for Ferrari’s home race the rumblings about Binotto’s future had started.

Even though they know little about the engineering processes required to produce a championship-winning car, star drivers can often have a disproportionate influence over impressionable owners. The suggestion from Italy was that a disconsolate Leclerc and his management, headed by Nicolas Todt, were lobbying to have Frederic Vasseur brought in from Sauber. A palace coup was in progress.

PLUS: How Ferrari missed its big chance to end a painful F1 wait

In 2015 Todt and Vasseur established ART Grand Prix, the super-successful junior formulae team with which Leclerc won the 2016 GP3 title. The Monegasque further cemented his relationship with Vasseur at Sauber in 2018.

Initially Ferrari denied any change would happen, but there’s no smoke without fire and on this occasion the smoke was rising, Vatican-like, to herald a new leader. Vasseur’s move is by far the most notable and political, its outcome determining the future prospects for F1’s most famous team at a time of intensified competition.

That Andreas Seidl got the nod to move seamlessly across to replace Vasseur at Sauber came as no surprise, a reputation forged at Porsche being ideally suited to Audi’s F1 ambitions. His McLaren role has been the perfect preparation and the transfer, reputedly brokered via a direct approach to McLaren CEO Zak Brown from Sauber owner Finn Rausing, was executed professionally and amicably.

Andrea Stella’s promotion at McLaren has surprised some. The Italian engineer is highly experienced and a capable manager, but there is a sense the team was caught off-guard by Seidl’s decision to leave, demanding a fast, internal appointment to show that it’s business as usual.

Vasseur was brought in by Ferrari to replace Binotto after its title challenge faltered in 2022, the catalyst for other pieces to move around the board

Photo by: Ferrari

The changes at Williams appear more critical, a failure of the leadership structure created less than two years ago. The fact that both team principal Jost Capito and technical director Francois-Xavier Demaison exited the business in December is hard to present as anything other than a debacle. Dorilton Capital’s recruitment of James Vowles as team principal may be inspired but not without risk.

While Vowles is highly regarded engineer with 20 years of experience at Mercedes’ Brackley base, the move to Williams is a major challenge for someone who has never led an F1 team with all the leadership challenges that entails. Particularly a team which needs to be turned around and has proved resistant to such change.

Further changes to the team principal line-up are likely to be an inevitable part of F1’s make-up. Contracts will come up for renewal, individuals may opt to move and owners will apply pressure to perform

Ultimately the question as to how these recent changes will work out depends on how much time team owners give their new recruits to deliver. The accepted wisdom is that it takes 3-5 years to unlock a team’s potential, but even that is tight.

Going forward, further changes to the team principal line-up are likely to be an inevitable part of F1’s make-up. Contracts will come up for renewal, individuals may opt to move and owners will apply pressure to perform.

At a time of unprecedented growth in F1, the politics and power play at the top will not diminish. Instead, in this relentless, unforgiving arena some team principals will flourish, while others wither under the irresistible weight of shareholder expectation.

Sauber

Seidl moves across from McLaren to replace Vasseur at Sauber

Photo by: Alfa Romeo

In: Andreas Seidl
Out: Frederic Vasseur

The appointment of Andreas Seidl as CEO is a shrewd move by Sauber Motorsport as it ramps up ahead of Audi’s entry in 2026. The German is no stranger to Hinwil, having worked on BMW’s F1 programme between 2000 and 2009, while his stints as director of race operations and then team principal of Porsche’s hybrid LMP1 programme marked him out as a highly capable team leader.

Frederic Vasseur’s former role of team principal is being split, a trend we’ve witnessed in a number of teams. Seidl’s task is to optimise performance during the balance of the current regulations while putting in place everything required to ensure Audi can challenge for the championship as early as possible.

Alessandro Alunni Bravi, a former lawyer who has been on the Sauber board since 2017 and was promoted to managing director last year, has been named ‘team representative’. While this peculiar title alludes to him being a team principal but without the power, it’s understood Alunni Bravi’s remit will focus on Sauber’s interactions with other stakeholders.

Ferrari

Vasseur has been installed in the high-profile Ferrari team principal job

Photo by: Ferrari

In: Frederic Vasseur
Out: Mattia Binotto

Frederic Vasseur finds himself in the arguably the most high-profile, high-pressure team principal role in F1. He’s not CEO, that role being held by Benedetto Vigna, with whom he is said to be in constant contact. Appointed in 2021, Vigna was less than impressed with Ferrari in 2022.

Under Mattia Binotto Ferrari produced one of the quickest cars of the year, one which brought Charles Leclerc a 46-point championship lead after three races, before reliability, operational and strategy mistakes pulled away the foundations of the Scuderia’s challenge.

Vasseur’s task will be to ensure that the technical team can elevate the car’s performance further and develop a race car capable of withstanding the impressive consistency displayed by Red Bull. With Mercedes confident that it will not suffer a repeat of last season, Ferrari has to push to the next level and Vasseur must ensure that those embarrassing technical failures, hesitant strategy calls and chaotic pitlane incidents become a thing of the past.

McLaren

McLaren promoted from within by replacing Seidl with former Ferrari man Stella

Photo by: McLaren

In: Andrea Stella
Out: Andreas Seidl

Former ‘executive director, racing’ Andrea Stella has big shoes to fill at McLaren since his predecessor, Andreas Seidl, was credited with helping the team recognise the need to undertake significant capital investment, a new wind tunnel and simulator key among them. The good news is that Stella, who will continue to report to CEO Zak Brown, knows the overall direction of travel within the team. He aims to continue where Seidl left off as well as looking for additional opportunities for the team to improve.

McLaren was beaten into fourth place in the constructors’ championship by Alpine last year. Stella will want to reverse a trend in which the team has retreated from third to fourth and then fifth in the all-important prize-money stakes. The arrival of new recruit Oscar Piastri will give him the challenge of helping a rookie gel alongside the impressive Lando Norris in the hope that McLaren can battle the likes of Alpine on a more equitable basis following the disappointment of the Daniel Ricciardo years.

Williams

Vowles has made the big leap into the team principal's seat at Williams

Photo by: Williams F1

In: James Vowles
Out: Jost Capito

Jost Capito so looked the right man for the job when he joined Williams in 2021. VW’s former director of motorsport was an early recruit by Dorilton Capital following its 2020 takeover. That he was gone within two years came as a shock. It's extraordinary to think Williams entered 2023 with vacancies in the roles once held by founders Frank Williams and Patrick Head.

Former Mercedes strategy director James Vowles is nothing if not courageous in taking on the task of turning around the once-great team. Despite Toto Wolff’s public support of the move, Vowles was unable to take up his new position until 20 February.

PLUS: What Williams’s new boss must do to change the fortunes of F1’s backmarker

One of his tasks will be to import some Mercedes’ winning processes. He must also deploy a management style strong enough to ‘win over the dressing room’, ensuring the team’s culture, morale and focus are united behind a common goal. Dorilton chair Matthew Savage will want to see Vowles return Williams to a credible contender, both on-track and commercially.

Vowles has begun his search for a technical director, following Demaison's departure

Photo by: Williams F1