Wilkommen Audi
The 2026 season will be the first without Sauber, which will leave the grid after just over thirty championships. The Hinwil factory in Switzerland will continue to operate thanks to Audi’s acquisition, which will make its Formula 1 debut with the same staff and drivers who competed in last year’s championship.
The major challenges
The German manufacturer’s highly anticipated debut is approaching, bringing its own power units to the grid, but difficulties remain. Team Principal Jonathan Wheatley admitted these challenges in an interview with Auto Motor und Sport, emphasizing that Sauber, second-to-last in the 2025 Constructors’ Championship with just a single podium scored by Nico Hülkenberg, “invested too little over the past fifteen years.”
The projects of the former team did not align with Audi’s ambitions, underlining what CEO Gernot Döllner recently stated: the goal is to reach the very top of Formula 1 by 2030. “The fact that we are already at this point with the car demonstrates how well we worked at Sauber,” Jonathan Wheatley added. “I don’t want to criticize those who managed the team and kept it alive, but we are starting from a significant disadvantage. For a long time, the objective was simply to field two cars and finish the races. In the future, our goals are different.”
The projects ahead
This is a further step forward, following Sauber’s progress in 2025, which achieved more positive results compared to the mere four points in 2024, and now Audi is ready to implement its plans with extensive work. “Every single sign in the factory will be replaced. Everything you see, hear, and touch on track will be different,” Wheatley concluded. “Leading this team throughout the season was not easy, but preparing for the transition to the official Audi team is a completely different story. The expectations and internal pressure are immense. This is an incredibly ambitious project. We still have a lot to achieve before January 1. We have far exceeded my expectations. If someone had told me at the start that we would score 70 points, that our pit stop performance would be among the top three or four teams, and that the car’s performance would improve so much, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have signed immediately. It has been an exceptional season.”
While Jonathan Wheatley acknowledges the historical underinvestment that Audi must overcome, the progress made during the 2025 transition year offers a glimmer of hope. The shift from a team merely aiming to “finish races” to a factory operation with eyes on the world title marks the beginning of one of the most challenging chapters in modern F1 history.
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