Thomas Fuhr starts as CEO of Audi Formula Racing on November 1. Photo: AUDI AG
On Wednesday, Audi announced that Thomas Fuhr will become CEO of Audi Formula Racing GmbH on November 1. Read it fast and it is a veteran-hire story. Read it slowly and it is a quiet admission: seventeen months ago, Audi deleted this exact job.
That is the detail worth chewing on. The company that builds Audi’s power unit in Neuburg an der Donau is getting a chief executive again, and the interesting question is not who he is but what the old structure could not do. My argument: Audi did not hire Fuhr to find horsepower. It hired him to make sure the horsepower it has already been given permission to chase actually shows up on time.
The job Audi scrapped on purpose
In May 2025, Audi put the chassis and power unit sides of the project under central management, the way a factory team would run things. Audi’s own release made Mattia Binotto Head of the Audi F1 Project, created a COO post at Audi Formula Racing (AFR) for Christian Foyer, and confirmed that Adam Baker, then AFR’s CEO, was leaving by mutual agreement. The CEO role disappeared. Stefan Dreyer stayed on as CTO and picked up the job of spokesperson for the AFR board.
On a whiteboard, that was tidy: one line of authority, no separate engine fiefdom. Then the organisation met reality. In March 2026, Jonathan Wheatley left the team principal role with immediate effect, citing personal reasons, and Binotto added team principal duties to his project remit, including leading the team at the circuits. Audi’s latest release now describes him as CEO and Team Principal of the Audi Revolut F1 Team.
Why a CEO, and why now
Audi has not said why it reversed course, so what follows is my read, not a confirmed motive. The person who owns the whole programme also owns the pit wall on race weekends. Neuburg, meanwhile, had a COO running operations and a CTO who doubled as the board’s public voice. The wording of the announcement gives the game away: Dreyer will now focus fully on the technical development of the power unit. “Fully” implies he was not, and that executive load had been sitting on an engineer’s desk.
Jürgen Rittersberger, the Audi CFO who chairs AFR’s shareholders’ meeting, framed the appointment as strengthening the existing structure. Fair enough as messaging. But you do not add a layer you already have, and the release does not say who Fuhr reports to. That gap is worth watching.
A manager’s CV, not an engine designer’s
Audi’s release lists Fuhr as managing director of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains from 2009 to 2012. After that came senior roles at GROHE and LIXIL, companies that make bathroom fittings and building products, and most recently the chief technology officer job at Georg Fischer Building Flow Solutions.
His Mercedes stint ended two seasons before the V6 turbo-hybrid era began in 2014, so nobody should expect him to arrive with a secret recipe, and Audi does not claim he does. What he brings is three decades of running engineering organisations, one of which built F1 engines. That makes this a hire about throughput, not about cleverness. It is also a useful reminder to read ex-Mercedes CVs for the job rather than the badge, a point we made when Ferrari put a Mercedes engine man on the chassis side.
The real clock is the 2027 allowance
Here is the context the appointment lands in. Under the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities system, the first review period closed after the Canadian Grand Prix with Audi, Ferrari and Honda more than 4% behind the leading combustion engine. The FIA’s announcement gave each of them two extra homologations in 2026 and two in 2027, plus matching increases to the cost cap and dyno testing allowances. Mercedes, in the 2-4% band, received one of each. The second review period, through Hungary, produced nothing new for anyone.
The scoreboard explains the urgency. On the official constructors’ standings as this was written, Audi is eighth on 23 points, ahead of only Williams, Aston Martin and Cadillac. The FIA keeps the detailed power unit performance measurements confidential, so outsiders cannot see the size of the gap, but the band Audi landed in says enough.
An allowance is a permission slip, not a part. Two extra homologations in 2027 are worth exactly what Neuburg can design, validate, dyno-test and deliver to Hinwil before the cars hit the track. The extra dyno time and cost cap room are resources, and resources need someone scheduling and defending them. That is the executive job Fuhr has just been handed, and it is why I think this appointment matters more than a routine management reshuffle.
What to watch next
The third review period covered rounds 12 to 18, from the Dutch Grand Prix to Mexico City, and at the time of writing I could not find an FIA announcement of its outcome. Beyond that, three things will show whether the reversal worked: whether Audi clarifies how Fuhr and Binotto divide authority, whether the 2027 upgrade programme visibly lands on schedule, and whether Dreyer’s narrower remit produces engineering progress rather than just a tidier org chart.
Audi is not the only newcomer betting on organisational patience, as Cadillac’s long-horizon Perez deal shows, and the benchmark keeps moving: Mercedes already has a title lead big enough to count in races. If Audi’s 2027 engine arrives on schedule, this appointment will look like housekeeping. If it does not, the structure that needed fixing is the first place to look.
Sources
- Audi: Thomas Fuhr appointed CEO of Audi Formula Racing (October 28, 2026)
- Audi: Audi centralizes responsibilities in Formula 1 project (May 2025)
- Audi: New management structure for the Audi F1 Project (March 20, 2026)
- FIA: ADUO results following the first and second review periods of 2026
- Formula 1: 2026 constructors’ standings
Lead Image credit: AUDI AG
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