F1 Team Principals: Who’s Ahead?

• Being a Team Principal is one of the most unappreciated jobs
• They make decisions that make or break a driver’s race
• SportsLeo ranks the current Team Principals

The position of team principal is among the most underrated in Formula One. The team’s driver typically receives the most praise when they win, but the team principal is typically blamed when something goes wrong. Since there is little praise and a lot of criticism, along with constant pressure to get the best performance out of your team, it could be argued that this is why this job is the most stressful one on the grid.

Who are the top 5 team principals on the current grid? Let’s find out!

5: Fred Vasseur (Ferrari)

Charles Leclerc and Frederic Vasseur. Photo/ AutoGear.

The new Ferrari team principal is not a household name for the more casual sports fans. Having said that, the former Alfa Romeo team principal has an impressive résumé from before he entered the sport and led Alfa Romao/Sauber to their best finish in the previous ten years this year while serving as their team principal.

Before making his F1 debut with Renault, Vasseur had a wealth of experience in the sport. Vasseur, a co-founder of ART racing, one of the most successful junior racing teams, has won in every division in which he has competed. In Formula 1, he has the chance to accomplish that with Ferrari. The results at Maranello will be interesting to watch.

4: Otmar Szafnaeur (Alpine F1)

Losing Oscar Piastri and Fernando Alonso this season was not the best demonstration of what Otmar could accomplish for an F1 team. It would be entirely foolish to disregard the impressive way he handled the Alonso-Ocon dynamic during the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP this season or the fact that Alpine finished fourth in the championship.

Additionally, his previous employment at Force India does not receive the praise it merits. At a fraction of their cost, the Silverstone-based team consistently outperformed every other team in the midfield. Otmar has built his career on managing teams effectively on a tight budget, so having him at Alpine during the budget-cap era could only be good for the team.

3: Andreas Seidl (Alfa Romeo)

Even after Seidl left McLaren, there was no animosity, and Zak Brown was accommodating in how things were handled, which speaks volumes about Seidl’s credentials. Seidl recently left McLaren after a very successful run in which he played a vital role in the team’s turnaround. When Seidl joined, McLaren was, to put it mildly, in bad shape. Fernando Alonso, the team’s star driver, had departed, leaving Carlos Sainz, who had just completed an average year at Renault, and Lando Norris, a rookie wildcard.

In addition, McLaren lost out to Renault that season because the Renault power unit did not have the desired impact on the team’s fortunes in 2018. A new guard, however, emerged for the 2019 F1 season. The team was more upbeat, the driver lineup was more interesting, and all of this contributed to better performance. For the first time since 2014, McLaren finished on the podium this season and gained ground. Seidl has been a critical contributor to the team’s continued success since that time.

Seidl will take on a new challenge beginning with the 2023 F1 season, where he will lay the foundation for Audi’s entry into the sport. It will be intriguing to watch how his new endeavour turns out.

2: Christian Horner (Red Bull)

Christian Horner. Photo/PlanetF1

Although Horner’s ranking as the second-best team principal of all time may not be universally agreed upon, that fact should not lessen Horner’s influence on Red Bull or his almost legendary status.

Six drivers’ championships and five constructors’ championships is an imposing record. But what’s overlooked in all of this is that, in 2014, at the dawn of the Turbo-Hybrid era, Red Bull completely lost its way. If a solution was not found, Red Bull was about to quit Formula One because the power unit supplier had become such a huge liability.

After seven years, the answer was finally discovered, and with Christian Horner’s help, the Milton Keynes-based team won the drivers’ championship in 2021 and the overall championship in 2022. Because he was the team’s manager from the beginning and guided it to the top of the sport, Horner stands out on the F1 grid. Horner’s career is already in the “Hall of Fame,” but the second stage of a resurgence under a new set of rules sets him apart from some of the most incredible team principal candidates in history.

1: Toto Wolff (Mercedes)

Toto Wolff. Photo/F1

Wolff oversaw arguably one of the most successful stretches in F1 history for any team. Before him, Ferrari had a 5-year winning streak. Wolff went one better and won 8 straight constructors championships.

Toto Wolff’s F1 career is still far from over, but for the time being, the Austrian is regarded as one of the sport’s most illustrious team owners.