Audi encouraged by pace despite 2026 engine limit

Audi heads into Formula 1’s summer break with momentum after Nico Hulkenberg’s ninth place in Hungary delivered a third straight top-10 finish, even as the team accepts its power-unit deficit will not be meaningfully fixed before 2027.

That late surge has changed the mood around Audi’s first season. Gabriel Bortoleto finished eighth at Silverstone and eighth again in Belgium before Hulkenberg added two more points at the Hungaroring, lifting the team to 12 points and eighth in the constructors’ championship, one point clear of Williams.

Audi racing director Allan McNish said the team was leaving the opening half of the season "on a high" after a run that has made it one of the more competitive cars in the midfield. He said the pace itself had been the biggest surprise.

"But ultimately I think the pure pace is better than I expected," McNish said at the Hungarian Grand Prix. "I wouldn’t have thought that we would be this quick and consistently this quick."

The recent form followed a far rougher start. After Australia, Audi went seven race weekends without scoring, with reliability problems and inconsistent execution preventing it from turning speed into results. McNish said that from Silverstone onward the team began to understand better how to extract performance from the car, while regular Q3 appearances and top-10 race finishes left it established just behind Racing Bulls at the head of the midfield battle.

He said there were still clear weaknesses, especially starts. "We have a lot still to improve," McNish said, adding that starts were "pretty obvious" as an area where Audi needs to do better.

The catch is that Audi’s biggest known weakness will not get a major in-season solution. McNish said the team does not plan any significant further power-unit upgrade before the end of 2026, with the Barcelona change introduced through the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities system limited to a small drivability-focused adaptation.

McNish said Audi has to balance chassis and power-unit spending under the budget cap and cannot commit everything at once. The team will keep developing the car in the second half of the season, but on the engine side he made clear that "the bigger parts are for 2027" and that there will be nothing major before then.

That leaves Audi treating 2026 and 2027 as foundation years rather than expecting a rapid jump to the front. Team principal Mattia Binotto has said the project is progressing as planned and judged the chassis to be around the fourth- or fifth-strongest in the field, while acknowledging the main deficit remains the engine.

Binotto said Audi is still working to its stated goal of being in position to fight for the world championship by 2030, a target that now looks tied less to finding hidden pace in the current car than to turning this unexpectedly solid midfield platform into a stronger power-unit package over the next two seasons.