Audi’s racing director Allan McNish has been positively surprised by his team’s start to the 2026 Formula 1 campaign – citing qualifying as a strength for the debutant squad.
The German marque has five Q3 appearances across the opening 11 rounds of the season between Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto, who respectively have an average qualifying position of 12th and 13th.
It certainly marks a steady start for Audi, which took over the historic Sauber squad for 2026 and currently has 12 points – 10 of which have come across the past three rounds.
That uptick in form can partly be put down to upgrades for Austria four rounds ago, focusing on low-speed corners, which helped it in Hungary last time out where Hulkenberg picked up two points for ninth.
When asked to review the season so far, McNish, who replaced former boss Jonathan Wheatley ahead of round four in Miami, said: “I’m happy. The fact that we’ve evolved as a team a lot, actually, since when I got directly involved, I can see a growth in the people, confidence in the people.
“I think we’re functioning as a team, and today was quite a difficult race because of different things, but the way that we executed it I thought was good.
“In terms of car performance, I think we’re better in qualifying than I expected. I didn’t think we would be quite so quick and consistently quick, and we are able to deal with that.
“We need to make a step forward again there.”
Allan McNish, Racing Director of Audi F1 Team
Photo by: Andy Hone/ LAT Images via Getty Images
But with Audi sitting eighth in the standings, 54 points behind midfield leader Racing Bulls in fifth and 165 off the top four, there are still aspects that the debutant squad must improve.
The power unit is one, given its chassis is considered one of the best, whereas race getaways is another problem area as Budapest saw Hulkenberg drop from 10th to 11th before he recovered to claim his first points of 2026.
“In terms of things that we’re not so happy about or things we can improve, definitely we need to work on the starts,” added McNish.
“That’s something that, again, hurt us [in Budapest], dropping behind [Liam] Lawson, because at the end there we had the opportunity to be ahead of one of the Racing Bulls, but we’re behind both of them.
“But overall, I come away from it thinking, yeah, we’ve got a lot we can improve, a lot, and a lot we have to improve, but we have now just jumped Williams in the constructors’ championship.
“We’ve consistently had Q3s, we’ve consistently had top 10s in the races and points, and I can see with the development that we’re making as a team operationally and also technically that actually we’ll just get stronger.
“I suppose that’s the biggest thing that I feel is comfort, more than confidence, comfort, that we’re just getting stronger on an upward trend at the moment.
“But just being totally honest, where we are is in the midfield and the gap to the top four teams is big. But considering we’ve done 11 races in our Formula 1 career, then I think it’s actually quite a good position to be in.”
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