F1 2026: Audi are spending £2bn and their new car already leaked

F1 News & Gossip

Audi are spending £2bn on F1 and their new car already leaked

Audi had their car launch yesterday

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Thursday 22 January 2026 08:13 Updated: 09:09

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Audi F1 team's car launch event did not go entirely to plan earlier this week, after a leak of the car design ahead of the actual event, according to reports in German media.

German car manufacturer Audi have taken over the Sauber team, and are gearing up for their first ever season in F1 both as a power unit manufacturer, and as a team.

Audi have kept the core of the Sauber team the same from last year, with team principal Jonathan Wheatley and drivers Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg remaining in their positions for 2026.

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The team were the first of the 11 F1 outfits to take their 2026 car design out on track, with a promotional filming day earlier in January allowing them to get out onto the Barcelona circuit.

Following that, the team had an official season launch event earlier this week, where the full car design was unveiled while Wheatley, Bortoleto, Hulkenberg and the head of the Audi project Mattia Binotto all spoke of their excitement ahead of the season.

However, according to Auto Motor und Sport, not everything went entirely smoothly during the event in Berlin, with the German publication reporting that during a dress rehearsal of the ceremony, images of the R26 car were shown in the event hall on the big screen.

On top of this, renderings revealing the R26's technical specifications were not to be released to the media until after the event, but these were shown on screen accidentally during the live stream of the event, according to the above publication.

Audi's 2026 expectations

While Audi have an advantage over the other new name on the 2026 grid in Cadillac due to the fact that they took over an already established team, Audi do have the added stress of having to build a reliable power unit, while Cadillac are using Ferrari power units for their first two seasons in the sport.

Nevertheless, Audi will be expecting to be competing in the midfield in 2026, just as Sauber were last year, before trying to close the gap to their competitors higher up the grid in the coming years.

Indeed, both Binotto and Wheatley have said that they want the team to be a championship-winning outfit by 2030, a bold claim and one that will take some going.

But they clearly have faith in their ability to create a fast, reliable power unit in the new regulations that are sweeping into F1 this year, leaving room for them to then grow as a team and experiment with different concepts when it comes to the car design.

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