Audi’s Formula 1 duo Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto must wait a bit longer to try out the 2026 car on the simulator, with their team deliberately holding back their first runs.
As Audi gears up for its official F1 entry as a works team next season, it has emerged as an outlier among manufacturer squads in how it is approaching its sim preparations.
While many have elected to get their race drivers in the simulator already to try out early models of the new 2026 challengers, Audi is still holding fire with its duo.
Hulkenberg said he hoped to be able to get his first run done "soon" as he revealed that one of the motivations for waiting a bit longer was to avoid him getting a wrong first impression.
With teams' models and understanding of the demands of the radically different ruleset rapidly changing as they continue to work on their designs, it is very easy for a driver to spend time driving something that is quickly made irrelevant.
Hulkenberg said: "It's still at the moment all evolving quite a lot and quickly, so they don't want to give a false impression and false reference. That's why I think we're still holding back a little bit at the moment."
Sauber's sporting director Inaki Rueda explained that there were actually two parallel factors that had triggered the decision.
The first one was logistical, in that with a compressed calendar it had been hard for the team to set aside some specific days to devote to 2026 evaluation.
"Before a race you would like to have a race driver in the sim a whole day," he explained. "So, for example, Nico was in last Friday, and Gabi was in this Monday and they were running Zandvoort and Monza, so they already had to split one day for two circuits.
"If you start looking at the calendar, and you start looking for slots of when can the driver come in, it's really difficult to slot [in].
"Then, on top of that, they say, 'OK I want to start trying the C46 [2026] car, so when do I find a slot for this?' And it starts becoming really challenging."
Rueda also backed Hulkenberg's claim that the 2026 car model was changing so fast that a too-early run risked being a totally wasted effort.
"It's developing at a big rate," he said. "I know when we are going to start exposing the drivers to the C46 car, but you don't want to do it too early with the fear that the car that you're going to show to them is still very different to what they will actually drive."
This rapid change of the model being tried out in the sim is something that Ferrari's Charles Leclerc - who got his first impression in the sim many months ago - had noticed.
"The development curve is so big at the moment that you might be in something one week, but then a week later things are different, in a different window," he said.
While a lot of drivers were left with a downbeat view of the new 2026 rules after trying the cars in the sim for the first time, Hulkenberg said that he would approach things with an open mind.
"To be honest, I don't care what others have said," he explained. "Eventually you drive the simulator, and you get what you get. You'll have obviously certain views and feelings then about it.
"It's certainly going to be different, that's to be expected. But then, come next year when we hit the track in real life, it's all quite new. So it's just about exploring, learning and adapting quickly then to these new regulations."
Waste of time?
While Audi is the only manufacturer that has not yet put its race drivers in the simulator, it is not the only team that has held back.
Haas boss Ayao Komatsu said that neither of his duo, Esteban Ocon and Ollie Bearman, had been put in the sim yet because he did not want to waste their time.
"It's really important to get the early idea of what it could be like, but it's also true that it's changing so much that there is no point spending lots and lots of time on that one," he explained.
"It's a moving target. So for us, again, as a small team, we are only going to put our race drivers in much later this year."
