Mattia Binotto is an Italian Formula 1 engineer and executive, currently CEO and Team Principal of the Audi Revolut F1 Team. He leads the Volkswagen-owned works manufacturer's grid entry, having built the role up from a technical leadership position into full command of the racing operation. ¹²

He was born on 3 November 1969 in Lausanne, Switzerland, to Italian parents and holds dual Italian-Swiss nationality. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 1994, followed by a master's in automotive engineering from the University of Modena. ³

“Mattia Binotto is an Italian Formula 1 engineer and executive, currently CEO and Team Principal of the Audi Revolut F1 Team.”

Ferrari: engineer to engine chief

Binotto joined Scuderia Ferrari in 1995 as an engine engineer on the test team and stayed for 27 years, a tenure spanning the Maranello squad's entire modern history. He worked through the Michael Schumacher championship era of the early 2000s — Ferrari's most dominant period — before becoming Race Engine Chief Engineer in 2007, the year Kimi Raikkonen won the title. He oversaw engine and KERS operations from 2009 and rose to Head of the Engine Department in 2013, the role in which he led the development of Ferrari's first turbo-hybrid power unit for the 2014 regulation change. This deep power-unit grounding is unusual among modern team principals and directly informs his fit at Audi, whose entire F1 differentiator is a bespoke in-house engine. ³

Chief Technical Officer and Team Principal

In July 2016 he was promoted to Chief Technical Officer, succeeding James Allison, and presided over a technical resurgence as Sebastian Vettel took the title fight to Mercedes in 2017 and 2018. In 2019 he was promoted to Team Principal, succeeding Maurizio Arrivabene. ³

His four seasons in charge were a rollercoaster. 2019 was competitive — Sebastian Vettel and a young Charles Leclerc took several wins, including a controversial Vettel victory in Singapore where an early undercut put him ahead of his pole-sitting teammate — but Ferrari then endured back-to-back winless years in 2020 and 2021 following a contentious power-unit settlement with the FIA. The team rebounded with the 2022 regulation reset, scoring a one-two at the Bahrain opener, and his most successful campaign came in 2022, when Ferrari won four races and finished second in both championships. Yet a run of reliability failures and strategy errors — most painfully throwing away Leclerc's near-certain home win in Monaco — saw the team fail to win any of the final eleven races and lose the title fight to Red Bull, putting Binotto under intense pressure. He announced his resignation in November 2022 and left Ferrari on 31 December 2022. ³⁷

Building the Audi F1 project

Binotto joined the Sauber-Audi effort on 1 August 2024 as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technical Officer of Sauber Motorsport, part of a restructuring under Audi CEO Gernot Dollner that saw Andreas Seidl and Oliver Hoffmann depart. He acted as interim Team Principal for the opening 2025 rounds in Australia and China, then in May 2025 his remit expanded to Head of the Audi F1 Project, giving him overall responsibility for the program. ⁴⁵

In March 2026, after inaugural team principal Jonathan Wheatley departed just two rounds into the season, Binotto additionally took on team-principal duties, leading the squad at the track. His title was confirmed as CEO and Team Principal of the Audi F1 Team in April 2026, with Allan McNish brought in as Racing Director to handle trackside operations. ¹²⁶

Management style

Binotto is an engineer-first leader, having spent the bulk of his career on the technical side at Ferrari before moving into team management. At Ferrari he was criticised for trackside decision-making under pressure; at Audi he has instead positioned himself as the architect of the wider organisation, prioritising clear structures and reporting lines — a stated aim of the restructuring that brought him in — and delegating raceday command to Racing Director Allan McNish. After the encouraging start to 2026 he struck a measured tone, noting the team had "shown that we can compete around the top 10" while candidly flagging a "very long list" of areas to fix. ⁴⁶⁷

Why he matters

Audi has set the ambitious goal of challenging for world championships by 2030, the most aggressive long-term target on the grid. As the man with ultimate responsibility for both the business and the racing team — and one of the few executives who has run a front-line operation and led a power-unit department — Binotto is central to whether the manufacturer's heavily resourced entry succeeds. The 2026 reset, defined by all-new engine rules and a roughly even split between combustion and electrical power, plays to exactly the technical background he built over 27 years at Ferrari, and the early signs — Audi's first points on debut and a car that runs around the top ten — suggest the foundations are sound even as the team works through a long fix-list. ²³⁶

Bottom line

A Ferrari lifer turned Audi boss, Binotto blends deep power-unit and technical expertise with team-leadership experience — now charged with turning Audi's works F1 entry, which scored its first points in his first season fully in charge, into a front-runner under the 2026 regulations. ²³⁶