Ferrari set Silly Season in motion, Sauber look like the biggest winners

Four team bosses move to another employer. Rarely has a Silly Season been so dominated by the team principals. The question is which F1 team has done the best business and which team has come off worst?

Ferrari

The changes come with the departure of Mattia Binotto. Ferrari and Binotto could no longer continue with each other. The Italian team had already been lobbying other team bosses and Binotto noticed that lack of trust. So the official reading is that Binotto himself quit, but actually both parties did not want to continue with each other.

With Vasseur, Ferrari have brought in an experienced man and perhaps more of a team boss than Binotto. The Italian was not much of a talker but did a good job in the past. However, those are two completely different jobs, as the team's constant shuffling proved in 2022. Binotto may not have been tough enough for his team, but Vasseur certainly is.

With experience in step-up classes (ASM and ART) and F1 (Renault and Sauber), Vasseur has shown he can lead a team. At Renault, he also showed he can stand his ground. If things don't go his way, he steps down. So at Ferrari, they will have to fully commit to his plans.

A changing of the guard in F1 is rarely a short-term success, but for the long term, Vasseur does indeed seem a better team boss for Ferrari than Binotto was. Vasseur is more of a leader and has enough experience under his belt to lead the team back to the top. The fact that, as a Frenchman, he is also detached from Italian sentiment could also possibly help him make rational decisions, as in the days of Jean Todt. The question is whether Vasseur will get the time at Ferrari.

McLaren

The Woking-based team may come off badly. Andreas Seidl was a good team boss for McLaren with plenty of experience, but for Seidl to choose Sauber says it all. As a potential factory team with Audi as a partner, Sauber is much more interesting to Seidl, where he will also be working as CEO rather than team boss.

McLaren promote Andrea Stella. The Italian is no stranger to Formula 1, having worked as a performance engineer for Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen at Ferrari, before becoming race engineer to the Finn and later Fernando Alonso. With the Spaniard, Stella moved to McLaren in 2015, where he went on to work as Head of Race Operations, then Performance Director and in the last few years as Racing Director.

Although Stella has a wealth of experience in F1 in various roles, he has yet to prove that he can also take on the role of team boss. Also, Stella's role within the team also needs to be taken up again by someone else. So the loss is big for McLaren and the question is especially how Lando Norris, with his contract through 2025, views this?

Alfa Romeo/Sauber/Audi

The team taking the biggest hit is Sauber. The Swiss team that was once founded by Peter Sauber and had a heyday with BMW already scored by signing Audi as a partner in 2026 and are now also bringing in important people with that name.

Of course, Alfa Romeo-Sauber loses a good and much-loved team boss Frederic Vasseur, but with Andreas Seidl, they bring in a big name as CEO, who already managed to impress with his previous work for the Volkswagen Group (at Porsche). Since his arrival, there was also a much calmer atmosphere and more clarity at McLaren, where he will certainly be missed.

Seidl is the ideal man to lead Sauber in their transition from Alfa Romeo to Audi. That Seidl is making the move from top team McLaren says enough about Audi and Sauber's ambitions. They want to go to the top and that appeals to Seidl. As a factory team, the chances of success in this are also much higher than with a customer team. The only question is who will take on the role of team boss at McLaren, possibly the departed Jost Capito at Williams. Capito has previously worked for Sauber, Porsche and Volkswagen Motorsport.

Williams

The big loser at the moment seems to be Williams, which sees two frontrunners leave with the departure of Jost Capito and François-Xavier Demaison. The Grove-based team has yet to announce replacements, which suggests that the departure of the two men is unexpected. That Capito and Demaison are making the move to Sauber as former Volkswagen Group employees is not a crazy thought.

So by mid-December, Williams will have to look for a new team boss and technical director, and that as the last team on the F1 grid. Capito and Demaison may not have helped the team much on its way up, but finding replacements for these names will not be easy for Dorilton Capital, especially with the time constraints of an approaching season.