Audi team principal Jonathan Wheatley, who joined from his former position of sporting director at Red Bull last March, said at the team’s launch this year: “We’re not here to mess around. It’s an ambitious project. We’re humble. We know where we’re starting from and we know where we want to go.
“We want to make Audi the most successful F1 team in history. There are milestones on that journey and we are starting it today.”
No pressure, then.
Audi won the Le Mans 24 Hours 13 times in 18 years from 1999 to 2016. And in rallying they were famous for introducing four-wheel drive with the iconic Quattro in the early 1980s.
They might not have taken part in F1 before, but they did compete in its forerunner, the European grand prix championship, in the 1930s.
In a battle with arch-rivals Mercedes, Auto Union won the title with the great Bernd Rosemeyer in 1936, won five races against Mercedes’ seven in 1937, while the legendary Tazio Nuvolari won races for them in 1938 and 1939 before the Second World War brought racing to a halt.
Audi’s entry this year rekindles that old rivalry with Mercedes, and battle lines have already been drawn in a pre-season row over the rules governing the engines’ compression ratio. Audi are said to have been prime among those pushing for a rule change because of a fear Mercedes had found a way of exploiting a loophole to their advantage.
Rivals on track with Mercedes, though, Audi are unlikely to be for a while.
While Mercedes start the season as championship favourites, Audi have a lot of work to do to transform Sauber into a winning proposition.
Following the announcement of Audi’s entry in August 2022, the first steps of the programme did not augur well. Audi did not invest anywhere near enough money anywhere near soon enough.
Sauber made no progress through 2023 and into the following year. With the clock ticking on its entry in 2026, Audi axed chief executive officer Andreas Seidl, who had left his previous role as team principal of McLaren to join them, in mid-2024.
He was replaced with a dual management team of former Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto, who was tasked with running the factories – Hinwil in Switzerland for Sauber, and Neuberg in Germany for the engine programme – and Wheatley, in charge at the track.
Even then, the management changes were not finished. Binotto had initially joined as chief operating and technical officer. Less than a year later, he was made head of the Audi F1 project, and chief executive officer Adam Baker left the company.
The appointment of Binotto and Wheatley had a relatively quick impact, as Sauber finally began to move forward in 2025.
Having been marooned at the back, Sauber became more respectable performers, and their veteran German driver Nico Hulkenberg even finally scored a podium after 16 years of trying in last year’s British Grand Prix.
This year, the driver line-up of Hulkenberg and Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto, who is heading into his second season, continues, and the new Audi engine makes its debut.
So far the team have made a promising start.
They ran their car early in January, the first team to do so built to this year’s new rules, and put a first aerodynamic upgrade on it in the final pre-season test in Bahrain last week.
Pace-wise, the belief is that Audi are in the midfield mix with Haas, Alpine and Racing Bulls, and ahead of Williams. A solid effort so far, although Hulkenberg is not getting carried away.
“It’s just speculation right now still,” the German said last week. “We really don’t know until Melbourne and even a few races in, because I feel at the moment it can be quite track dependent on how your package feels on different circuits.
“So we’ll have to wait and see until everybody really pulls their pants down in qualifying and we’ll find out. Early days. I hope we’re competitive somewhere in the midfield right now.
“But, yeah, the team’s been working hard over the winter, pushing all the areas, doing the power-unit side for the first time. It’s been busy and a challenge, and I think we’re OK. But there’s still a lot of work and a lot of room for improvement on that side and a lot to come.”
