The Empty Chair at Neuburg: Audi Restores Its Power Unit CEO Role as Thomas Fuhr Takes Charge

When I read a press release, my habit is to look first at what has not been written. In Audi's latest announcement, one line looks at first glance like a recruitment notice — Thomas Fuhr will become CEO of Audi Formula Racing GmbH, the head of the Neuburg facility where the company builds its Formula 1 power unit. The real weave of the story is not in that sentence but in a fact hidden near the end of the release: Audi had eliminated the role at the start of 2026, when former CEO Adam Baker left the organisation. A chair was removed; now the same chair is being put back. I started decoding injuries where the headline stopped and the notes began — and here the note is that an organisation took something away and then returned it.

To understand the context, the Neuburg unit needs unpacking. Audi's Formula 1 programme runs alongside its acquisition of Sauber, but the power unit work sits entirely in Germany, where a completely new engine has been built from the ground up and taken to the track in the 2026 season. That is the season in which the technical regulations changed: a 1.6-litre V6 turbo, a roughly 50-50 split between electric and internal combustion output, the end of the MGU-H, and 100 per cent sustainable fuel. For a manufacturer that has never built its own F1 power unit, that rule change is both a gift and a trap — the advantage of old knowledge shrinks, but building from scratch means every calibration hour carries a price.

Audi's language this time names three people, and the division of labour is explicit. Stefan Dreyer, chief technical director, will now, in the company's words, focus fully on leading the technical development of the power unit. Christian Foyer, chief operating officer, continues to oversee day-to-day operations at Neuburg. Fuhr arrives above both as head of the whole unit. Team principal and Audi F1 CEO Mattia Binotto framed it directly: strong foundations are already in place at Neuburg, and Fuhr understands both the technical challenge and what it takes to build and lead high-performing teams, which is why he will take the organisation to the next level.

Now the part that gets the least attention. Fuhr's career cannot be summarised in a sentence and a half. From 2026 to 2026 he was managing director of Mercedes-AMG High Performance Powertrains — the Brixworth operation that went on to build the engine behind the longest winning run of the hybrid era. Those four years covered the most uncertain stretch of the transition from KERS toward V6 hybrids; the people sitting at Brixworth then laid the ground for what the track showed after 2026. Senior positions at GROHE and LIXIL followed, and he joins from Georg Fischer Building Flow Solutions, where as chief technology officer he led international engineering and manufacturing organisations. More than thirty years in total, roughly half technical and half organisational.

That blend matters to Audi because the job of a CEO in a power unit company is not measured in horsepower but in interfaces. Three things run in parallel inside a new engine operation and often eat each other: data from the dyno, data from the track, and the correlation between them. When correlation breaks, engineers live on the dyno overnight and the same fault returns in the car a week later — that is a technical problem and a prioritisation problem at once. A CEO decides which issue gets the scarce test-bench hours, where supplier delays get stopped, which department's hiring accelerates and which stays flat, and how many days it takes to settle a conflict between Dreyer's technical group and Foyer's operations. That work shows up in a boardroom, not on a timing screen. I watch the dressing room before I trust the fitness report — and here the dressing room is that organisational chart.

The detail worth pausing on is the permission given to Dreyer to focus fully on technical development. It reads two ways. One, a technical director is now freed from administrative drag and can spend more time on the engine. Two, it suggests that in recent months his time was going into holding an organisation together rather than into engineering. Restoring a role is itself an admission that a gap existed in the structure — and when fatigue in a project starts showing through the organisation rather than through the hardware, clarifying roles is usually the first treatment.

Who bears the cost is my standing question, and here the answer is plain. The weight of Neuburg lands directly on a driver like Gabriel Bortoleto — young, with limited depth of experience, in a car whose power unit is still writing its track record. Every retirement, every power unit change, every energy-management error is recorded in the driver's statistics regardless of where the cause actually sat. That is why organisational news never reads to me as mere HR: a chair at the top is connected to someone's sleep at the bottom.

Here is where I part with the most popular reading of this announcement. The popular reading is that Audi restored the CEO role to strengthen its engine programme, therefore the programme will be stronger. My objection is simple: a CEO does not add horsepower. A new power unit is usually weak in two places — the depth of understanding of the combustion process, and the accuracy of dyno-to-track correlation. Both improve through hours, calibration runs and specialist hires, not through an org chart. Between 2026 and 2026 Honda restructured repeatedly; Renault reorganised after 2026 as well. In both cases the recovery accelerated where engineering depth increased, not where reporting lines became cleaner.

The second objection is more practical. Adding a layer has a price — decision latency. By the time a technical director, a COO and a CEO have finished asking each other questions, a free practice session can be gone. The important question is therefore not how experienced Fuhr is, but whether his arrival speeds decisions up or lengthens the queue of approvals. In the week I learn that Neuburg has increased hiring in combustion and energy management, I will call this appointment a success. If the first big move is another internal reorganisation, I will say the chair is filled but the seat is still empty.

Two things are worth watching. First, what kind of organisation Fuhr leaves behind in his first ninety days — whether engineering depth at Neuburg grows, or only reporting layers. Second, the slice of Bortoleto's data that never makes a headline: how often the car stopped on track, and how often the power unit was the reason. If the second number falls before the summer, the restored role was the right treatment. If it does not, we will have to accept that the empty chair was never Neuburg's problem.