"It's only going to get better" - How Audi is responding to rocky start to F1 2026

The Miami Grand Prix summed up Audi's debut campaign as a fully-fledged Formula 1 works team in a nutshell. Glimpses of impressive underlying performance, thwarted by a brace of early gremlins, whether on the power unit or in its race operations.

On Saturday, Nico Hulkenberg failed to make the start of the 19-lap sprint with a leak that led to a fiery exit on the laps to the grid, while Gabriel Bortoleto was disqualified for a technical infraction - a spike in air intake pressure - before a gearbox problem left him only able to complete three laps in Q1 and left him in last place.

On Sunday, Hulkenberg had to pit for damage on lap one before soon disappearing from the race with another drivetrain issue. Bortoleto's back-of-the-grid qualifying position made the team think about what could have been after he moved up to 12th.

Williams scored points with both cars in ninth and 10th, and with a clean weekend it's not unreasonable to suggest that could have been Audi, too. Instead, it's another character-building weekend for the team as it tries to get a handle on 2026's complicated power units, both from a performance and a reliability point of view.

Performance will be a long-term process, even with Audi likely getting some help from the ADUO catch-up system to further improve the V6 engine. Audi's new racing director Allan McNish acknowledged there's no hiding from the squad's teething issues, four races into its life as a works operation after taking over Sauber.

"Well, obviously, you don't want them, that's for sure," McNish said. "But a lot of PU manufacturers are having some issues. It's not just sitting on us. So, I think there is a lot of areas that everybody is trying to manage and control and also learn about. We are learning about a lot more than some of the others. Definitely, we need to tidy up those [issues]. There's no question about it and that's a clear focus."

Allan McNish, Racing Director of Audi F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

McNish felt the integration between the former Sauber headquarters in Switzerland and Audi's power unit plant in Neuburg is already in a good place. "It's only going to get better, isn't it? At the end of the day, it literally started at the beginning of this year, so we're four months in," said McNish, who took two of his three Le Mans 24 Hours wins for the German brand.

"The structure of it is pretty set up and pretty stable in that respect. Clearly, we've got some areas that we're working on at the moment, but I wouldn't say that the communication side is an issue. I think that there will be benefits as we go forward and work more closely together and naturally that will get better. But I don't think fundamentally there's anything that we need to change there."

Audi has two points on the board, courtesy of Bortoleto's ninth in the Australian season-opener, so as some of its midfield rivals start piling on upgrades, Audi will have to respond to stay in touch. The German marque started trickling out new parts in Miami with a revised front brake duct and a tweaked diffuser, with another batch coming at the next round in Canada.

"We didn't come with the package that some of the competition did," McNish acknowledged. "It is going to get harder and harder, so it's not as if we can sit and just hope that upgrades [will do the job], we also have to improve in other areas as well. The development rate through the season is going to change race to race a little bit in that mid-grid area, I would say. I see it going all the way to the end of the year."

He added: "I would say the underlying chassis performance is pretty good. [Gabriel] was quicker than the people we expected him to be. I think if he had started normally where he could have qualified, in and around that 11th place, then he would have finished in the points. Same with Nico. So, performance-wise through that first sector we were looking really strong. When we come up on traffic, we're not quite as easy to get past people as what we'd like. But hopefully we're not in a position where we have to overtake them."

Looking at Honda's even bigger struggles as Aston Martin's works partner, there's no underestimating how complicated the 2026 regulations set has been for any manufacturer. So, while Audi's entry hasn't started off as smoothly as it would have liked, its teething issues didn't come as a total surprise either, and the brand has always taken a long-term view of when its journey would become a success.

"I think we've all been here for quite a little bit of time. It's not exactly an easy environment," McNish said. "It's a super competitive environment. Everybody is competitive and punching. In that respect, I think it's not completely unexpected that we don't get everything right straight away."