Audi Sport boss Stephan Winkelmann will leave the company later this year to become president of Bugatti.

Winkelmann, 52, has led Audi’s performance division since March 2016. He will replace 59-year-old Wolfgang Dürheimer at Bugatti, sources at its parent company, the Volkswagen Group, have revealed.

Although Dürheimer is relinquishing his post at Bugatti, Autocar has been told he will remain chairman of Bentley for the foreseeable future.

Audi has tapped Michael-Julius Renz to replace Winkelmann as CEO at Audi Sport. The 59-year-old has been president of Audi's China sales division since January 2015 and previously served as its head of sales in Germany.

Renz began his career at Audi in 1994 as head of retail marketing.

Volkswagen Group officials suggest longer-term management plans will see Winkelmann, who headed Lamborghini between 2005 and 2016, replacing Dürheimer as chairman of Bentley.

Dürheimer has had two stints as Bentley's chairman. The first was between 2010 and 2012.

It is not clear where Dürheimer will end up in the post-Dieselgate management structure. Dürheimer's contract at Bentley is understood to end in mid-2019. It is said that he wanted to leave at the end of this year but has been convinced to stay until at least the launch of the Continental GTC, the convertible version of the recently launched Continental GT.

A former research and development boss at Porsche, Dürheimer was appointed to a similar position at Audi in 2012. However, clashes with former Volkswagen chairman Martin Winterkorn over the direction of a number of electric car projects saw him return to Bentley in 2013 after just nine months as the head of research and development at Audi.