There has been so much excitement and anticipation surrounding the addition of an eleventh team in Formula 1 – in the form of Cadillac – that it would be understandable if Audi felt a little overlooked.
It was over three years ago that Audi announced it was moving into F1, and later in 2022 it was confirmed that Sauber would become a partner in the new venture. An entirely new power unit division was set up at the Neuburg an der Donau facility in southern Germany, while a full takeover of Sauber was eventually completed.
Given the evolution of what has been a very impressive F1 constructor for over thirty years, Audi may not capture the imagination in the same way as Cadillac’s expansion team, but it hasn’t really tried to.
Audi has announced investments – from Qatar – and partnerships in the form of sponsors Revolut and Adidas – but it was in May that Cadillac made a lot of noise in Miami to unveil its logo and identity.
In mid-November it was finally Audi’s turn in Munich.
The timing was no coincidence, as Audi hasn’t felt the need to make a huge song and dance until it’s actively on the grid. But with only the final three races of 2025 to go before attention turns to the new era, it was time for the German manufacturer to make sure it was in the news for the season-ending series of races. And there were two key themes that really stood out during a short visit to the Audi Brand Experience Center on Wednesday.
One of them was the history of the brand. It might have revealed an identity for 2026 – with a concept livery on its R26 model used to represent the key colors that will combine to create the Audi image in F1 – but above all it pointed out that top-level motorsport has long been part of the business.
The Auto Union Type C was the first car to hit the market before the arrival of key personnel, with the likes of Audi CEO Gernot Dollner, head of Audi’s F1 project Mattia Binotto and team boss Jonathan Wheatley all being dropped off in iconic Audi machines.
Drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto – who also arrived as passengers in iconic Audi Quattro rally cars – take care of the present, but were joined by legendary former drivers such as Tom Kristensen, Hans-Joachim Stuck, Michele Mouton and Allan McNish.
They may not all be F1 names, but they are revered as pioneers or benchmarks in their respective categories. And that’s something Audi could claim with the machines that made it possible, whether by winning championships in the Group B era of rallying, or by taking the first diesel victory at Le Mans with the R10 TDI. There was also the first winner of the Dakar with electric drive in 2024 – the Audi RS Q e-tron – which was added to the list of technological pioneers that have brought Audi success in motorsport.
“I’m a car guy,” Wheatley says. “The moment I was approached about the possibilities of joining the Audi Formula 1 project, I don’t know, there was something in me, and I felt drawn to it – it didn’t feel like I was going anywhere to come here.
“I’ve spent my years looking at these cars. You’re talking about the Quattros in the woods with flames coming out of the exhaust, and if there’s anything you want to get excited about as a kid, that’s it.”
“The technology that Audi has used to achieve their success in motorsport has been extraordinary. And compelling is another thing that makes the project exciting. What are we going to do differently? What are we going to do that is unique? How are we going to achieve our objectives by doing it our own way?”
“I’m really looking forward to that journey and I’m very excited. It feels like it’s really happening now. It took a while, but soon we will be the Audi Formula 1 team.”
There was talk of the journey, but with the brand’s history established – and the foundation laid for Audi to inspire belief in its latest motorsport venture – there was also a real focus on what lay ahead.
A large countdown clock showed that it took (at the time) 115 days, 9 hours, 15 minutes and 29 seconds for the lights to go out in Australia to start the 2026 season, marking the most public start to Audi’s F1 story. But four years later, a bigger, more imposing goal was set: the team would compete for the world championships from 2030.
It’s a goal that Binotto described as “ambitious, because we are ambitious”, but Dollner also says it has its roots in the past successes of other new Audi motorsport projects.
“We may be the team that has the least orientation where we are now, because there are so many new things coming together in this project,” Dollner admits. “A new team and a team in a start-up phase. So next year especially will be a huge challenge. But as we said, we have a long-term plan. Our job will be to learn and adapt quickly and see how things go.
“We did some benchmarks. We had some experience with other racing series. We found that a four-year period is quite ambitious but realistic. So that’s where it came from.”
“We have a three-phase model. We start as challengers, then we want to become competitors and then in the third phase from 2030 we will race for victory.”
It was an agreement repeated repeatedly throughout the night, with Audi keen to show that it understands the challenges ahead, but pointed to the string of four-wheel winners that kicked off the evening as evidence that it can tackle those challenges effectively.
Drawing a line in the sand so early in the team’s history is a brave move, but there are examples that prove Audi has experience in sticking to its objectives. Hundreds of millions of dollars may have been allocated to improving infrastructure and facilities at Sauber, but acquiring an existing team on the chassis side also helps accelerate that timeline.
F1 is a very different beast to the categories that have seen success before, but Audi certainly has the track record to suggest it can at least try to tame it.
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