‘Like teaching a baby how to walk’ – Bortoleto and Hulkenberg ready for ‘long road ahead’ as new Audi project comes to life

Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hulkenberg have shared the latest on where the Audi F1 project stands as the German automotive giants continue preparations for a long-awaited debut in the sport.

Audi, who announced their intention to join the grid back in 2022, have taken Kick Sauber’s place in the 2026 field, while also developing their own power unit for F1’s all-new regulations.

After gathering some initial data at the recent Barcelona Shakedown, Audi returned to action alongside the rest of the paddock in Bahrain this week, with the R26 notably sporting heavily revised sidepods, among other changes.

Speaking to F1 TV at the midway point of the test, Bortoleto and Hulkenberg both gave their thoughts on how the new car and power unit are performing, as well as the work that remains to be done.

“I’m quite excited,” began Brazilian racer Bortoleto. “I’m quite excited to keep driving and learning new things. Obviously, we know it’s a big list of things to be done from our side – it’s a new team, new power unit, new car and everything.

“Every time we go to the track, we learn new things, and we improve our car or our power unit. Hopefully we can keep up on that level of improvements we are having and keep evolving.

“It’s a huge learning curve. Especially because I feel like we started on the very basics, you know. We are the only team using the Audi power unit, so it’s not that we can also have more data – we have the data that we provide the team by the amount of mileage we have put so far.

“It’s like teaching a baby how to walk and talk. We need to do this as quickly as possible, and in a good way as well.”

Hulkenberg offered up similar comments to team mate Bortoleto, with the German encouraged by the progress he has seen between the Barcelona and Bahrain gatherings.

“I think a good step forward in terms of performance, in terms of reliability, and just being able to get laps in, to get kilometres on the car,” he stated. “We’ve made some big steps forward there, between Barcelona and here.

“Then, Bahrain is a very, very different circuit to Barcelona. It’s a very hard and unforgiving track that really exposes a lot of weaknesses usually, and historically, from any car, because of the rough tarmac, low grip, very windy, hot track temps. It’s a true, good test.”

As for how Audi are dealing with their workload, Hulkenberg added: “We’re constantly working on the power unit, dialling things out, or trying to, running different settings. It’s really a step-by-step case, run-by-run trying different things, feeding back how it feels, tweaking it again and going out again.

“I think we’re not a million miles away from what I can gauge midfield-wise, but it’s always hard to tell. Just the energy mode, there’s a huge lap time swing in that, fuel load obviously is always a question mark.

“I know there’s a long road ahead, a lot of work still ahead of us, and I think a lot more potential once we dial out many things.”