Cadillac and Audi enter F1: Two teams with the same ambition but very different projects
Audi team boss Jonathan Wheatley, who joined from his former position as sporting director at Red Bull last March, said at the team’s launch this year: “We’re not here to mess around. This is an ambitious project. We’re humble. We know where we started and where we want to go.”
“We want to make Audi the most successful F1 team in history. There are milestones in this journey and we start today.”
So no pressure.
Audi won the Le Mans 24 Hours 13 times in 18 years, from 1999 to 2016. And in rallies they were famous for introducing all-wheel drive with the iconic Quattro in the early 1980s.
They may not have been in F1 before, but they competed in its predecessor, the European Grand Prix Championship, in the 1930s.
In its battle with arch-rivals Mercedes, Auto Union won the championship with the great Bernd Rosemeyer in 1936, and won seven races against Mercedes in 1937; and the legendary Tazio Nuvolari won races for them in 1938 and 1939 before World War II halted racing.
Audi’s entry this year has reignited the old rivalry with Mercedes and the battle lines have already been drawn in the pre-season debate over the rules determining the compression ratio of engines. Audi is said to be among those pushing for the rule change due to fears that Mercedes has found a way to exploit a loophole to its advantage.
Although it is a rival with Mercedes on the track, it does not seem likely that Audi will be like this for a while.
While Mercedes starts the season as the favorite for the championship, Audi has a lot of work to do to turn Sauber into a winning candidate.
Following the announcement of Audi’s participation in August 2022, the program’s first steps did not bode well. Audi hasn’t invested anywhere near enough money soon enough.
Sauber has made no progress throughout 2023 and the following year. As the clock ticks down heading into 2026, Audi has sacked CEO Andreas Seidl, who left his previous role as team boss at McLaren to join them in mid-2024.
He was replaced by a dual management team, with former Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto tasked with running the factories (Hinwil in Switzerland for Sauber and Neuberg in Germany for the engine programme) and Wheatley in charge of the circuit.
Even then the management changes were not complete. Binotto initially joined as chief operations officer and technical officer. Less than a year later, he was appointed head of the Audi F1 project and CEO Adam Baker left the company.
The appointments of Binotto and Wheatley made a relatively immediate impact, with Sauber finally starting to move forward in 2025.
Stranded at the back, Sauber had more respectable performances and even experienced German driver Nico Hulkenberg finally managed to get onto the podium after 16 years of effort at last year’s British Grand Prix.
This year, the driver lineup of Hulkenberg and Brazilian Gabriel Bortoleto, who is entering his second season, continues and the new Audi engine is unveiled.
So far the team is off to a promising start.
They launched their cars in early January, becoming the first team to do so under this year’s new rules, and made the first aerodynamic upgrade at the final pre-season test in Bahrain last week.
In terms of speed, there is a belief that Audi is in the midfield with Haas, Alpine and Racing Bulls and ahead of Williams. It’s been a solid effort so far, but Hulkenberg isn’t getting carried away.
“These are just speculations at the moment,” the German said last week. “We don’t really know until Melbourne and even a few more races, because right now I think it depends on how your package feels at different tracks.
“So we’ll have to wait and see until everyone really drops their pants in qualifying and we’ll find out. It’s early days. Hopefully we can be competitive in the midfield now.”
“But yes, the team has worked hard over the winter, pushing all areas, doing the power unit part for the first time. It has been an intense and challenging process and I think we are good. But on this side there is still a lot of work, a lot of room for improvement and a lot to come.”
