Audi and the departure nightmare, Binotto confirms: “It’s our main problem”

Complicated start The start of Audi’s debut season in Formula 1 was not easy. The house of the Rings has experienced some internal turmoil, with the sudden resignation of team principal Jonathan Wheatley which has effectively allowed all the power of the team to be centralized in the hands of Mattia Binotto. Even on the track, however, the results of the R26 were not particularly good. After the first three rounds of the championship, Audi has in fact scored just two points – the same as Williams – and is eighth in the Constructors’ standings, ahead of only Cadillac and Aston Martin. Too little for a team that actually proved to be particularly competitive on the flying lap, so much so that in two out of three qualifying sessions a single-seater from the Hinwil team entered Q3. Problems at the start The car that Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto have in their hands would also be reasonably fast in terms of race pace, but the big problem is represented by the starts. In fact, it had already emerged during the pre-season tests in Bahrain that the trigger when the lights were turned off on the German single-seaters was too slow. At Suzuka during the first lap Bortoleto slipped from ninth to 13th position and Hülkenberg from 13th to 19th. Mattia Binotto confirmed the existence of a problem linked to the power unit which also affects the starting procedure, but for the moment the solution seems far away: “It is our main problem. We discovered that the biggest gap compared to the top teams is due to the power unit, which did not surprise us – the Audi project manager explained to the German media – we cannot draw hasty conclusions now, but it is clear that there is a problem with the energy and also with the way in which we use it. We need patience – he commented the former Ferrari team principal – we are very ambitious and ideally we would like to solve the problems in a few races, but it is not possible.” It will be interesting to understand if the cancellation of the events in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia will help Audi to present itself in Miami with some corrective measures that will help it at the start.