McLaren chief who left team for F1 rival given first orders by his new boss

10 August 2023 , 21:30

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McLaren chief who left team for F1 rival given first orders by his new boss

James Key's first job as Alfa Romeo technical director will be to kickstart the team's technical department in the midst of an underwhelming season for Sauber.

Key is a notable hire for the team, having played a key role at McLaren since joining the team in 2018. He was released in March this year after an organisational shake-up in Woking, amid McLaren's dreadful start to the season.

In June, Alfa Romeo announced he would be returning to the Sauber team, having spent two years at Hinwil more than a decade ago. But it's a team which looks a lot different these days, in the midst of a transition with the end result being the birth of the Audi works team from 2026.

Key starts his role on September 1 and will be thrown straight into the deep end. Alessandro Alunni Bravi, the team representative in lieu of a team principal this season, has publicly stated that Key's first big job will be to aid in the fight to finish seventh in the championship this season – two places higher than their current position.

"Priority checklist for James Key will be to improve the performance of the car and to help Andreas Seidl to shape the technical department. As a team, we are in a transformation process, and the addition of James Key brings a lot of value to our team, because James has not only been a technical director.

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"He has been in different roles in the technical level of the teams he has previously been working with. So, I expect that he will give the contribution as everybody in the team, that we need to do a step as a team and move forward."

Key was one of Seidl's top lieutenants when he was team principal at McLaren up to the end of last season. He is CEO at Alfa-Romeo Sauber these days, but the chain of command is somewhat murky in the absence of a team principal – Frederic Vasseur was not directly replaced when he left that role to take the top job at Ferrari.

Alunni Bravi pointed at Seidl as the man currently leading the charge and balancing the task of performing in the short-term and transitioning into the Audi team over the next two years. "First of all, when we speak about the leadership we speak about Andreas Seidl. He is our leader, he is our group CEO," the Italian added.

"I'm one of the people working in this team, as all the other 600 people, try to give my contribution and to support Andreas, and to help him. But of course, Andreas is our CEO, he is the one who leads our group and the one who is giving the direction for the future."

Daniel Moxon