Sauber Team Principal and former Red Bull Sporting Director Jonathan Wheatley has defended the FIA’s stewarding procedures in Formula 1 following criticism from former colleague Christian Horner.
Wheatley, who served the Milton Keynes-based squad for 18 years until last year, subsequently joined the Swiss outfit – soon to be Audi – and formally took over as its boss in April.
Sauber has endured a tough start to 2025, but received an enormous boost at the Spanish Grand Prix through Nico Hulkenberg, the German veteran showing good race pace and, via a late overtake on Lewis Hamilton, secured sixth place.
The classification moved him up to fifth after Max Verstappen was given a 10-second time penalty for colliding with George Russell after a hectic restart, in which Hulkenberg would have had an eagle-eyed view of.
Verstappen’s frustrations boiled over when being requested by the Red Bull pit wall to give Russell fourth place, having taken to the emergency exit at Turn 2.
This subsequently was proved to be unnecessary, as the stewards concluded that no wrongdoing from Verstappen, in this instance, had taken place.
Horner complained that teams are required to “second-guess” what the stewards think, and when asked for his take on the topic, Wheatley showed understanding towards race control.
“I’ve taken an awful lot of time over the 19 years that I was a sporting director and working with the FIA to try to really understand the pressures they have in race control, walk a mile in their shoes as well,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“It’s not always the case that that’s the only incident they have to look at. There’s a lot sometimes, especially after a first lap. I don’t know the specifics of what Christian wanted to talk about.
“I didn’t really follow his race as much as I followed ours. But, like I say, I’ve spent a long time trying to understand the pressures in race control and trying to understand whether I’m going to get an answer or not.”
‘Stewarding has come on enormously’ – Wheatley
Despite Red Bull’s ultimately incorrect call to instruct Verstappen to hand the place back, Wheatley said that teams generally do make the correct decision, mitigating Horner’s proposal to put the onus back onto the stewards in the first instance.
“The teams always have the option to do that themselves,” he said. “The teams have the option to read the situation and do it themselves and teams are really professional.
“They’ll be given recommendations, I’m sure, up and down the pitlane. We had a really good look at what happened in Turn 1. If we’d been in any doubt, we might have handled the situation differently but we were very confident of where we were.
“I think I’ve gone on record before saying that stewarding has come on enormously recently. I think the FIA are doing a really good job with that. But it’s a work in progress.”
READ MORE – Max Verstappen makes U-turn on F1 Spanish GP collision with George Russell
