{"id":38869,"date":"2026-02-04T08:47:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=38869"},"modified":"2026-02-04T08:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:50:18","slug":"binotto-audi-have-many-problems-to-fix-before-2026-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2026\/02\/04\/binotto-audi-have-many-problems-to-fix-before-2026-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Binotto: Audi have many problems to fix before 2026 begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Audi<\/a> R26 mads its long-awaited debut in Barcelona last week, setting the team’s first laps as an engine manufacturer. This milestone, though significant, marks the beginning of a demanding F1 journey for the German squad.<\/p>\n

Although nothing definitive can emerge from a pre-season Shakedown, there is still room for observations and early analysis. Reliability is a particularly measurable characteristic, even in the earliest days of testing.<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Audi avoided any disasters<\/a> in their first sessions of 2026 – but there is evidently room for improvement.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Audi R26, Barcelona Shakedown Week: Day 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Audi work to overcome difficulties encountered in Barcelona<\/h2>\n

Alongside Red Bull<\/a>, Audi enter this year’s campaign as a new engine manufacturer. There has been substantial investment into the team’s factory in Neuburg, where their power units are designed, developed and assembled.<\/p>\n

In the long-term, Audi make no mistake of their ambitions. They have already set 2030 as the target year to begin challenging for Championships.<\/p>\n

Although setting five-year plans is not a wise move historically (most infamously exemplified by Alpine) the German squad are understandably aiming for the front of the grid. Still, this is very much a long-term objective.<\/p>\n

For the short-term, Audi anticipate significant difficulties – both on the chassis and engine side.<\/p>\n

Generally speaking though, it’s the engine that presents the most uncertainty. Unlike their aerodynamic department in Switzerland, which has over two decades of experience developing Sauber’s F1 cars, Audi’s engine development is a new frontier.<\/p>\n

Conscious of this steep learning curve, Mattia Binotto<\/a> has consistently downplayed his team’s chances for the 2026 season. The former Ferrari<\/a> team principal insists that Audi are not in a position to take the field by storm.<\/p>\n

A series of persistent (though far from catastrophic) issues in the Barcelona shakedown have given validity to Binotto’s words of optimism.<\/p>\n

With under 250 laps completed, only Cadillac and Aston Martin<\/a> (who only ran for one full day) accumulated less track time. Various problems, from the power unit to mechanical side, made themselves known on the A526.<\/p>\n

Speaking during last week’s running, Binotto was honest about the task ahead:<\/p>\n

“I think Gabi [Bortoleto] is happy after the running this morning. He couldn’t run well on the first day, very little mileage. <\/em><\/p>\n

“He was very, let me say, anxious to have some experience on track to understand the car, the management, power unit and drivability…<\/em><\/p>\n

“It’s a lot of work for the entire team, it’s a lot of work for the drivers – for the engineers back at home.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Fixing all the problems, design, operations, whatever we have seen. So really for us it’s no stones unturned, all the details need to be managed and need to be fixed.<\/em><\/p>\n

“We’ve got a very long list, very very long list. I’ve never seen such a long list. But it’s again, great because the team is really committed to improve and come to Bahrain in better shape.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Gabriel Bortoleto, Barcelona Shakedown Week: Day 5, 30 January 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

An uphill battle<\/h4>\n

To some degree, Audi can be satisfied they avoided certain pitfalls in the build-up to testing. Although their 240 lap tally is nowhere near what the likes of Mercedes accomplished, they still leave Barcelona with respectable mileage.<\/p>\n

Moreover, their engine – whilst experiencing a few hiccups – still completed the equivalent of several race distances. This provides the engineers back at Neuberg with plenty of data to go through and analyse.<\/p>\n

However, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Aside from the Honda engine<\/a> (which had limited track time due to Aston Martin’s delays) the Audi power unit completed the fewest laps.<\/p>\n

Unlike Honda, the German manufacturer does not have over a decade of experience in Formula 1 to draw from. Moreover, Audi do not have the luxury of a customer team running their power units and helping collect more data.<\/p>\n

This gives established names like Mercedes<\/a> and Ferrari another advantage. Even Red Bull, who also debut new engines, enjoy the benefit of VCARB gathering data with their power units.<\/p>\n

More broadly, there is the question of whether Audi used the 2026 sustainable fuels in the Barcelona shakedown. As recently analysed LWOS<\/a>, the interaction between the new carbon-neutral fuels and 2026 engines could be the biggest cause of reliability woes this season.<\/p>\n

Aside from the complexity of the power units themselves, the unique fuels used by the teams (based on how their suppliers developed biofuels to meet the FIA’s standards) require immensely sophisticated chemical reactions to work effectively with the 2026 powertrains.<\/p>\n

If Audi used the sustainable fuels in Barcelona, they could actually have a better understanding of this area than their rivals. However, if they opted against this, Audi could encounter another set of problems when testing commences in Bahrain.<\/p>\n

Reliability has been mentioned as a top priority at the German outfit for several months. Binotto knows better than most about the importance of getting the foundations right with an F1 power unit.<\/p>\n

Only with a durable engine can Audi begin focusing on more performance-related updates.<\/p>\n

Main photo: Audi F1 Team Content Hub<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Audi R26 mads its long-awaited debut in Barcelona last week, setting the team’s first laps as an engine manufacturer. This milestone, though significant, marks the beginning of a demanding F1 journey for the German squad. Although nothing definitive can emerge from a pre-season Shakedown, there is still room for observations and early analysis. Reliability […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":38870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2576,2540,2582],"class_list":["post-38869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-audi-f1-team","tag-binotto","tag-f1-2026-season"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38869"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38879,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38869\/revisions\/38879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}