Imminent Audi F1 milestone with F1 2026 engine set to burst into life
The Audi R26 concept car
Audi F1 is set to fire up its new power unit in the back of its first F1 chassis over the coming days as preparations for F1 2026 ramp up.
Jonathan Wheatley says plans to fire up the first Audi hybrid F1 engine remain on schedule, with the achievement set to be reached before Christmas.
Jonathan Wheatley: Audi F1 engine fire-up before Christmas
Earlier this year, Sauber team boss Jonathan Wheatley revealed the intention to fire up the new Audi F1 engine in December, with that timeline still on schedule.
The Sauber name disappears after 32 years this winter, with the Swiss squad morphing into the factory Audi F1 team following a full takeover by the German manufacturer.
Manufacturing its own chassis and power unit for the new regulations incoming for 2026, Wheatley said the fact that the winter testing programme is starting so early has brought all the teams and manufacturers’ schedules forward compared to most years.
“We’re bringing together a brand new power unit with a chassis for the first time and we’re firing it up before Christmas. I can’t remember ever doing that,” Wheatley told media including PlanetF1.com after the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
“So there’s a huge amount to do between now and then, and that’s why we talk about this project to be challenging at the end of the decade, because it takes time, and I’m hoping, certainly, I have a little bit more time in my life when I’ve just got to concentrate on being Audi and not being two teams at the same time!”
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Wheatley’s F1 career stems back over 30 years and, in his experience, such an early fire-up of the following season’s engine/car is unprecedented.
“It’s not normal in Formula 1 to do it,” he said.
“It is normal for everybody this year, because basically we brought the whole winter testing programme forward, so all of your targets.
“I think, for me, to have a car ready at that time actually shows how well Sauber will have done.
“So we’ll actually have our definitive race chassis, our engine, all together, fired up with all the right people, before Christmas.”
Regardless of how early Audi’s fire-up comes, the German manufacturer has already been beaten by Honda.
The Japanese manufacturer shared an audio recording of its new 2026 1.6-litre V6 hybrid on social media on Friday, marking the first insight into how the new formula will sound.
Speculative reports have suggested that Audi will take to the track for the first time on January 9, with a filming day mooted to take place at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya on that day, more than two weeks in advance of the beginning of the first private track test for the 11 F1 teams at the same venue between January 26th and 30th.
Sources within Audi have declined to clarify the accuracy of this date, given the desire of all the teams to keep initial track time away from the prying eyes of fans and the media; even the first five days of official track time will take place behind closed doors.
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What is known is that most of the teams, including Audi, do plan on carrying out a filming day with their new cars in advance of the Barcelona test, although the details of any of these tests are unlikely to be confirmed in advance.
But, for Wheatley, a filming day and the three pre-season tests only mark the start of a long journey for Audi and, even once the first race in Melbourne rolls around, figuring out a pecking order of the true level of a team’s competitiveness will be very difficult.
“You’re not going to know until Melbourne,” he said.
“Perhaps not even Melbourne. Probably need to be four races into the season before we can actually build a picture of our performance.
“But this is an incredibly ambitious project; we have so much to do before January 1.
“I can’t begin to tell you; running the Formula 1 team this year has been one thing, getting ourselves ready to become the Audi Formula 1 team next year, you can imagine the expectation, the pressure on us, internally, on every single department.
“Every sign in the factory, every single thing, has to be different. Everything you see, feel, touch, and hear here in the circuit is different.”
Wheatley’s arrival last year as team boss at Sauber/Audi came after almost 20 years as sporting director and team manager at Red Bull, roles that allowed him to grow into senior leadership and prime him for helping to shape Audi into how an outfit hoping to become winners should look.
Having had the time to identify the areas in which Sauber has been lacking compared to the likes of Red Bull, Wheatley said there is a clear area of disadvantage that is being addressed.
“It would be fair to say that there’s been a significant lack of capital investment in the team over the last 15 years,” he said.
“This isn’t to detract from people who have sponsored this team, who’ve owned this team, who’ve kept it alive.
“I want to be very clear about that, but yes, we’re starting from a long way behind.
“Three-hundred-odd people and now we’re nearing 700 people. We’ve got such a huge ambition, so much to do between now and then. We’ve expanded into another facility, further up the road from the original factory, and we needed to.
“Some of us are moving back in. We’ve done a pretty significant redevelopment of the original building alongside the wind tunnel.
“It’s going to be nice to have an office that doesn’t feel like it was built in the 1970s! But it’s a sign of our ambition, and, for me, it’s been a challenging year.”
Earlier this year, Audi announced the opening of a new UK technology centre at Bicester Motion, with this facility aiming to help enhance the team’s technical capabilities by way of attracting top engineering talent from the UK.
With seven of the 10 teams based in the UK’s ‘Motorsport Valley’, the ability to attract local talent could offset the disadvantage of being headquartered elsewhere.
The Bicester facility is yet to make a significant impact on the team’s preparations, Wheatley said, with the 2026 season set to see efforts there escalate.
“The plan for that was to really ramp up in 2026,” he said.
“It was about establishing it, getting a framework there, and then ramping up through ’26.
“So I still think it’s a very clever thing to do, and obviously that was put in place before I came here.”
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