Sauber Team Representative Alessandro Alunni Bravi has revealed how Audi’s influence was involved in the abrupt change to Valtteri Bottas’ Formula 1 race engineer.
Prior to the Miami Grand Prix, Sauber announced that ex-Ferrari performance engineer Steven Petrik was to replace Alex Chan as the voice in Bottas’ ear on the radio.
The news proved to be sudden and even the Finnish driver, who is out of contract at the end of this season, claimed that Sauber’s swap was not “a decision he made.”
The unforeseen switch had obvious repercussions in Miami, where Bottas was penalised three places on the grid for impeding McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in Sprint quali.
Alunni Bravi has confirmed outside suspicions that the restructuring came from Sauber CEO Andreas Seidl, who is tasked with overseeing the side’s transition to Audi.
“Andreas Seidl decided to anticipate certain decisions, and start implementing the changes that will bring the current structure towards the final structure that we will have in place in ’26,” Alunni Bravi explained.
“But we needed to start implementing those changes. This is not the final structure of the race team.
“As in Hinwil, there is not the final structure of what we will be the Audi F1 team and the organizational chart.
“We wanted to start, and Andreas Seidl decided to do it immediately. Because we think that we need to bring a bit more experience, but also to bring people that can have know-how from other teams, from top teams and help us to develop our processes, our analysis.”
Alunni Bravi also clarified that Petrik had worked with Bottas since the Pirelli test after the Chinese GP and how the driver was informed about the decision in Shanghai.
“We discussed this with Valtteri after China. There was a meeting immediately after the race,” he added.
“Steven Petrik was already race engineer of Valtteri in Suzuka during the two Pirelli test days. And we decided to anticipate this change.
“Of course, when you take a decision, you can always take a good or a bad decision – and only the time will prove if we have been good in taking this one.”
Furthermore, the Italian, 49, also denied that the revelation coincided with Sauber’s confirmation that Nico Hulkenberg will be arriving at the team from Haas next term.
“There was no link between the change of the race engineer and the announcement of Nico,” he highlighted.
“It was just one of the first steps that we wanted to implement, to have a new organization also in the race team coming into place as soon as possible.”
