Want to become a Formula 1 team principal? Well, current evidence would suggest that if you’re white, male, somewhere between 50 and 70 and German is your home language, you’ll walk straight into a job.
Okay, so perhaps it’s not the most diverse group of individuals heading up the 10 teams that currently make up the Formula 1 field. But at least there are no fixed CV requirements for landing one of these coveted but challenging roles.
As you’ll find out in this article, it’s good to have an engineering background and a knowledge of how teams run – but former racers, skilled management types and hard-nosed businesspeople are also desirable. And it would appear that if you’re all of the above, you’ll go far in the team leadership game.
Let’s meet those who have done exactly that – and take a closer look at what they do.
What is a team principal in F1?
In simple terms, the team principal is the boss of a Formula 1 team. In some languages – notably German, which four of the current set speak at home – ‘boss’ is effectively the word they use as job title. As such, the team principal’s position is clear enough. The buck usually stops with them as far as the Formula 1 team’s performance is concerned.
There was a time when team principals and owners/founders were often one and the same – think Colin Chapman (Lotus), Bruce McLaren or – most enduringly – Frank Williams. They might also have happened to design the car (Chapman), work on it in the pits (Williams) or drive it (McLaren). Nowadays, team principals don’t get their hands dirty, much less drive. They’re typically hired employees. They may hold shares, but that’s it as far as it goes in terms of ownership.
The fact that modern team principals are hired reflects the reality that F1 teams no longer operate in isolation. In some cases, they’re part of a wider organisation with which they share skills, people, premises and history – Ferrari being the classic example here. Red Bull Racing, on the other hand, is an example of a team owned by an entity from an entirely different world. Between these two extremes, there’s a range of ‘governance’ set-ups. But it suffices to say that F1 team principals all have bosses. Bosses who want a return in terms of results.
What does an F1 team principal do?
The one thing every F1 team principal does is serve as the public face of the team. They give endless press interviews in which they speak on the team’s behalf, both away from the track and during race weekends.
They also represent the team’s interest in the political and sporting sense, for example in meetings with the governing body, race stewards and other teams. Though they’ll typically have specialists at their side depending on the occasion, this is where diplomatic and business skills come in handy.
Another essential role is that of people management – shaping a (hopefully) winning environment and structure. Sure, you can be an engineer at your core, but a team principal can’t be the type of person who will hide at the back of the garage and pore over numbers. As is the case for the head of any organisation, they’ll need to be able to step back, see the bigger picture and make decisions accordingly.
One of those decisions – and probably the most important – is what they should rather delegate than try to do themselves. A Formula 1 team is made up of highly specialised people such as race engineers, strategists and mechanics. Nearly all of them know more about their specialist area than the boss does. So it’s key for the team principal to ensure the right people are hired, given the right structure to work in, and then trusted.
That said, some team principals are more hands-on than others. This is where styles will differ according to their management philosophy and skill sets. Some may prefer to take a supervisory role in all things. But for others, if there are areas where they can offer specific expertise, then they may do exactly that!
Mercedes – Toto Wolff
• Team: Mercedes
• Time with the team: Since 2013
• Wins as team principal: 114
This Austrian former racing driver, who turned 50 in 2022, is not only team principal but also a substantial shareholder. He’s responsible for all Mercedes-Benz motorsport activities, much in the manner of his German predecessor Norbert Haug.
Wolff was a handy racer, but switched his focus to sportscar racing after a stint in Formula Ford in Austria and Germany in the early 90s. He gathered a few successes without setting the world alight, and his motorsport legacy will undoubtedly be his more recent work off the track. He was a director with Williams before switching to Mercedes, where he and his countryman Niki Lauda – who passed away in 2019 – became synonymous with the successes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg and more.
Wolff is married to Scottish former race driver Susie (previously Stoddart), who was CEO of the Venturi Racing Formula E team before stepping down in August.
Red Bull – Christian Horner
• Team: Red Bull Racing
• Time with the team: Since 2005
• Wins as team principal: 84
It’s a little ironic that while two of the 10 F1 team principals are Austrian and four are German-speakers, the job of running Austria’s team belongs to the one of only two Englishman on the scene. Like Wolff, Christian Horner is a former driver. He went a lot further in terms of single-seater racing, however, reaching the lofty heights of Formula 3000 in the late 1990s. At that point, he founded the Arden team, which makes Horner one of the last owner-drivers to have competed at a high level in single-seaters. By the end of 1998, however, he had decided that his strength lay behind the pitwall rather than behind the wheel.
Seven years after quitting driving at the age of 25, Horner graduated from F3000, in which Arden had by then amassed multiple titles. Red Bull, who had bought the Jaguar F1 squad, appointed Horner boss of its eponymous operation for its debut in 2005. It proved a perfect match, with the Brit overseeing the team’s gradual rise to frontrunner status, and then a glut of titles for Sebastian Vettel. Unmoved from his pitwall perch to this day, Horner is also famous for his ‘restless leg’ during tense races – and being married to Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.
Ferrari – Fred Vasseur
• Team: Ferrari
• Time with the team: From 2023
• Wins as team principal: 0
Fred Vasseur came through the ranks as a team boss in much the same way a driver would. After studying engineering and aeronautics, the Frenchman founded his own team in 1996. Running initially under the ASM banner, and later as ART, it gathered trophies for fun in the junior formulae. Among other successes, Vasseur oversaw Lewis Hamilton’s Formula 3 Euroseries and GP2 titles in the mid-2000s.
With a CV like that, it was perhaps inevitable that Formula 1 teams would come calling. Sure enough, Vasseur joined Renault as team principal in 2016. But despite the French connection, the relationship only lasted a year. When Vasseur next surfaced in mid-2017, it was on the German-speaking side of Switzerland, where he took up a similar position with the Sauber team, which took on the Alfa Romeo name during his time there.
The Italian link was a hint of things to come: in the great team principals' shuffle of late 2022, Vasseur was announced as replacement for Mattia Binotto at Ferrari.
Alpine – Otmar Szafnauer
• Team: Alpine
• Time with the team: Since 2022
• Wins as team principal: 0
Szafnauer got to where he is by means of a sidewards step in the Formula 1 midfield. Previously with Aston Martin, the Romanian-born American departed the team in January 2022 before resurfacing at Alpine the following month. Upon his appointment, he pledged that Alpine would fight for the world championship within 100 races - that’s before the end of 2026, in other words.
Though primarily a businessman by trade and training, Szafnauer can point to a little racing on his long CV, thanks to a spot of Formula Ford in the early 1990s. But it was off the track that he began to make his name, leaving a long career at Ford Motor Company to become Operations Director at new Formula 1 team British American Racing in 1998. He then did a stint with Honda before joining Force India in 2009 and rising to become team principal there – by which time it had become Aston Martin.
McLaren – Andrea Stella
• Team: McLaren
• Time with the team: From 2023
• Wins as team principal: 0
With Andreas Seidl having moved to join his old chums at Sauber following a four-season stint as McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella steps into the German's shoes at the British team from January 2023.
This represents an internal hire: Stella has been promoted from his role as executive director for racing. And there's a lot more to it than the convenience of not having to change the initials on the team principal's headset: the Italian comes with a vast amount of hands-on engineering experience. He worked with the likes of Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso at Ferrari before following the latter to McLaren in 2015.
AlphaTauri – Franz Tost
• Team: Alpha Tauri
• Time with the team: Since 2005
• Wins as team principal: 2
Just like Christian Horner over at the ‘big sister’ team that is Red Bull Racing, Franz Tost has held his team principal role since 2005. Another former racer who had decided to retreat into team operations, Tost was also appointed by Red Bull following its takeover of another team – in this case Minardi. It was, of course, dubbed Scuderia Toro Rosso at that time.
Born in 1956, Tost is the oldest team principal on the F1 grid at the time of writing. The Austrian grew up idolising local hero Jochen Rindt, and took the chance to race when it came along in his twenties. He competed in various Austrian junior categories for six years, winning the Formula Ford 1600 title in 1983. After quitting racing a couple of years later, he worked his way up in the world of team management. His first Formula 1 role was with Williams, where he stayed for five years before Red Bull came calling.
Haas – Gunther Steiner
• Team: Haas
• Time with the team: Since 2014
• Wins as team principal: 0
Like Tost, Steiner is a German-speaking veteran hailing from the Alpine region. Though a decade or so younger, he too arrived in Formula 1 around the turn of the century. But the Italian – who also holds American citizenship – got there by way of rallying, where he started as a mechanic and worked his way up to manage the Ford World Rally Team in 2000 and 2001.
More: Gunther Steiner interview - How to become an F1 team principal
His move into F1 came as managing director at Jaguar, but he remained only for a couple of seasons. After a year off, he became Technical Operations Director at the new Red Bull Racing team – before moving to North Carolina to work on Red Bull’s motorsport operations in America. It was there that he made the contacts that ultimately led to him being appointed to build the Haas Formula 1 team from the ground up. Though team principal has been his title from the very beginning of the project, Steiner is exception in that he can be regarded as its hands-on founder too.
Aston Martin – Mike Krack
• Team: Aston Martin
• Time with the team: Since 2022
• Wins as team principal: 0
Krack is a no-nonsense technical man who quietly built up enough experience in multiple disciplines to attract the attention of headhunters looking for somebody to replace Otmar Szafnauer at Aston Martin earlier this year. He was already a top engineer at BMW Sauber when Sebastian Vettel began his Formula 1 career there in 2006-07, so accepting the post at Vettel’s current team represented something of a reunion for the pair.
During the intervening years, Krack had a stint in Formula 3, worked on the Porsche LMP1 project and then rose to oversee BMW’s entire motorsport portfolio from 2014 to 2021. Hailing from Luxembourg, it was Krack who tipped the scales in favour of German-speakers amongst the ten F1 team bosses. And yes, his CV does have a fair amount of overlap with Seidl’s.
Williams – James Vowles
· Team: Williams
· Time with the team: Since 2023
· Wins: 0
Vowles made his name in Formula 1 as a pitwall strategist – he served as Mercedes’ motorsport strategy director in the four years leading up to his move to Williams. But that was just the culmination of over two decades at the team based in Brackley – Vowles was also a British American Racing, Honda and Brawn man before the 2010 rebranding to the three-pointed star. He worked closely with Toto Wolff in the leadership team during some of Merc’s most dominant times.
But with Wolff firmly at the top of the Mercedes tree, the Briton would have to switch teams if he wanted to be in charge of one. So when an opportunity arose at Williams – one of the Silver Arrows’ technical partners – following Jost Capito’s departure at the back end of 2022, Vowles took it. He turns 44 during 2023, making him one of the paddock’s younger team principals.
Two points on the Vowles CV are unusual for F1 top brass. First, he holds a specific motorsport degree from Cranfield University. And second, you could call him an active racing driver following his appearances in the Asian Le Mans Series during 2022!
Alfa Romeo – Alessandro Alunni Bravi, Xevi Pujolar, Beat Zehnder
· Team: Alfa Romeo
· Time with the team: Since 2023
· Wins: 0
As any motorsport rule-maker will tell you, it’s never very long before teams will find some new way to come at a problem. So it’s no surprise that even the venerable role of team principal came in for a spot of innovation heading into 2023, with Alfa Romeo deciding to go into the campaign with a ‘management structure’ instead of a traditional individual boss, all overseen by Andreas Seidl, who joined from McLaren when the Switzerland-based team saw Fred Vasseur depart for Ferrari during the off-season.
How does it actually break down? Former Trident GP2 team principal Alessandro Alunni Bravi will be ‘team representative’ and perform the diplomatic functions of a team principal with the F1’s bosses, sponsors and media. The Italian, who has also worked as a driver manager (with Robert Kubica among others), has been part of the Sauber (which runs the Alfa project) operation as a board member since 2017.
Other parts of the job will be carried out by experienced Spanish head of track engineering Xevi Pujolar and the team’s stalwart, home-grown sporting director Beat Zehnder. Only time will tell if this model will prove to be a model of Swiss efficiency.
