When Audi enters a racing series, it usually wins. From rally legends to endurance icons, Audi has dominated motorsports for decades. But Formula One is a different beast… or is it?
Yes, F1 cars are technical marvels. But the thing with Audi is that it’s always figured out how to build the right race cars for the task at hand. Will that translate to F1? I see no reason why it shouldn’t, and Audi joining for the 2026 season can only help.
Photo by: Audi
The playbook has been thrown out the window for all the other teams heading into this season. Their drivers and engineers will have to devise entirely new racing strategies, and we could see all teams learning how to maximize the new car’s potential to their advantage.
Audi is a works team. That means it fully controls its own destiny. Audi took over the Sauber facilities in Switzerland, which is where the chassis is built. The Audi F1 tech center is in England, and Audi will build the engines in Germany.
By contrast, the new Cadillac team will get its power unit from Ferrari (at least initially); Aston Martin uses a Honda power unit; McLaren uses one from Mercedes-AMG; and so on.
When Audi enters a racing series, it usually wins.
The power unit performance changes for 2026. There’s still a turbocharged 1.6-liter V6 at play, as well as the motor generator, dubbed MGU-K. That K stands for kinetic, and it’s the only motor generator on the cars now. There were previously two, with the other called the MGU-H, where the H stood for heat. One harnessed energy under braking, and the other did so via the exhaust gases.
Stepping down to a single motor-generator will save weight and reduce overall complexity. That generator will shoulder a larger power load, however, as engine power is cut for the new season. The cars will still deliver around 1,000 horsepower, but the power split is around 50:50, instead of the 20 percent of power previously supplied by the motor generators.
Not that the cars are remotely the same, but Audi has a history of winning with hybrid race cars. I know you remember the incredible R18. But even before that, when Audi wanted to go endurance racing, it set incredibly difficult goals and then met them. Let’s jump back to the Audi R8 LMP. That car was introduced to kick off the 2000 racing season, and it was immediately amazing.
That’s putting it lightly, to be honest. The car won Le Mans in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, and 2005. Who won it in 2003? The Bentley Speed 8. You know what that car is underneath… It’s basically the Audi R8 LMP.
That’s just endurance racing. We could also talk about the Audi S1 and Group B. We could talk about the TCR series, GT3-class racing, and we could take a deep dive into the amazing Audi IMSA GTO cars.
Formula One is, of course, quite different from all of that. You can’t simply roll into F1 and expect to get instant top-tier results. You need the right team management in place. Audi already has that covered, too.
The team is led by Jonathan Wheatley, a fixture in the sport for the last 35 years and a proven winner. Alongside Wheatley, there’s another familiar face (and one of the best hairdos in the game) in Mattias Binnoto.
Photo by: Audi
Finally, you need the right drivers behind the wheel. This is one of the variables, besides car capability, that will be most interesting to watch in Audi’s first season. Audi has a pair of hot shoes in Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto.
One is a skilled journeyman looking for his first victory, while the other enters his second year at the top of the sport. Both have plenty to prove. Hulkenberg seeks his first finish at the top of the podium, and I’m sure he’d love to do so as a German driver for the German team.
The 2026 season of Formula One will certainly be an interesting one, and it will be extremely interesting to see if Audi can bring its motorsport-winning ways to the sport. After all, Audi has just four years to accomplish its own goal of winning a constructors’ championship by 2030.
