Racing
© Spencer
Audi’s scoreless Miami Grand Prix weekend laid bare the defining problem of its 2026 Formula 1 start, as another run of technical failures hit both cars and left the team with reliability as its clear number-one weakness.
Miami compressed almost every part of that struggle into one weekend. Nico Hulkenberg failed to start the sprint after a fluid leak caused a fire on the way to the grid. Gabriel Bortoleto then lost his sprint result when he was disqualified from 11th for excessive intake air pressure. Before grand prix qualifying, Audi changed both gearboxes and Hulkenberg’s power unit, but Bortoleto was left 22nd on the grid after a braking problem. Hulkenberg’s race then ended after seven laps with a drivetrain overheating issue, while Bortoleto recovered only to 12th, 13 seconds outside the points.
That left Audi without a point for the third straight round and still stuck on the two points Bortoleto scored with ninth place in the Australian opener. The wider pattern has become harder to ignore. Hulkenberg was sidelined before the start in Australia by a technical problem, Bortoleto failed to start in China because of a hydraulics failure, and Miami became another weekend in which Audi’s pace was secondary to whether it could simply get both cars through the sessions cleanly. The team sits ninth in the constructors’ championship.
The criticism around the project has sharpened as the failures keep stacking up. Sky Sports Formula 1 lead commentator David Croft called the run of problems “a little bit embarrassing” for Audi, pointing to “three out of five races” in which the team has suffered pre-start failures. Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher, speaking on Sky’s Backstage Boxengasse podcast, was even more direct, saying Audi’s communication was “a catastrophe” and accusing the team of making “too big a secret” out of its problems.
Audi race director Allan McNish accepted where the priority now lies after Miami. “We need reliability. And then we can also start developing in other areas as well,” he said. “That’s certainly an area that’s a clear focus number one.”
The cost is bigger than lost finishes. Audi has completed only 331 of a possible 524 laps so far this season, a damaging shortfall for a new power-unit manufacturer trying to learn the 2026 rules with only two cars on the grid. Bortoleto has already pointed to that disadvantage, noting that Audi cannot match the volume of data gathered by manufacturers supplying several teams. Until the failures stop, Audi is not just dropping points. It is also giving away the mileage it needs to close the gap.