Audi misses Miami SQ3 again as Bortoleto takes P11

Gabriel Bortoleto qualified 11th and Nico Hülkenberg 12th for the Miami sprint, leaving Audi just short of SQ3 again and extending its early-season pattern of near-misses outside the top 10.

The frustration was greatest for Bortoleto because Audi had arrived at the edge of a breakthrough despite a messy start to the day. Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi driver, said the team could have reached SQ3 "if everything had gone perfectly" after what he described as "a huge chaos" in FP1. He spent 30 minutes in the garage and said that when the car did run, "it was not properly configured." Even so, he recovered strongly enough to put the car on the sixth row.

In SQ2, Audi's real target was Alpine. Bortoleto got to within 0.021 seconds of Pierre Gasly's best time on his first run, underlining how small the gap was between the two teams in the fight for the final SQ3 places. His second attempt did not bring the improvement Audi needed, and he made a mistake at the final hairpin. Bortoleto still felt the lap itself was not a disaster, saying: "The lap was not bad. A few things here and there, but that applies to everyone."

Hülkenberg's session followed a similar theme. Nico Hülkenberg, Audi driver, said it had been "a more or less clean session," even if it was "not 100 percent perfect," and that the result reflected "where we are right now." That assessment matched the outcome: Audi was competitive enough to fight for SQ3, but not quite able to find the final margin.

That made Miami another example of the team's position early in 2026. Audi has shown enough pace to run in the midfield battle and threaten the top 10 on a single lap, but it still has not consistently turned that into SQ3 appearances. In Miami, only Alpine joined McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull in the top 10. No other midfield team made it through.

There was still some encouragement in how close Audi came, especially after its disrupted preparation and with the gap to Alpine described as small. The team also brought updates, although both drivers viewed them more as a step forward than a transformation.

The bigger test now is whether Audi can convert that pace on Saturday. Hülkenberg said "everything is still to play for" because "our race pace is pretty solid" and "we usually manage degradation well." Even so, with all eight cars from McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull already inside the top 10, turning 11th and 12th on the grid into sprint points will still require Audi to break more than one familiar pattern.