- Nico Hulkenberg announced as the first confirmed driver for Audi’s 2026 F1 entry
- Current Haas F1 driver will first race for Audi-owned Sauber team in 2025 and help develop Audi’s own car
- Hulkenburg previously raced for Sauber F1 in the early 2010s and has also won at Le Mans
We’re still more than a year away from seeing an Audi-branded car on the starting grid of a grand prix, but we at least now know who’ll be behind the wheel when that happens. Audi has revealed that Nico Hulkenberg will help the automaker challenge for top honors in 2026.
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But before that happens, Hulkenberg will spend the 2025 season racing for Stake F1 Team Kick Sauber, which Audi acquired earlier this year, and which will eventually be transformed into a full Audi factory team. The 36-year-old German will also help Audi develop the new car it will use in its first-ever F1 campaign, and its first grand prix program since the Auto Union days of the 1930s.
Related: Audi Sport Shows F1 Livery Ahead Of 2026 Entry, Announces Hybrid Powertrain Development
Hulkenberg was a Formula 3, GP2, and A1 Grand Prix champ in the 2000s before graduating to F1 at the start of the next decade. He started his top-tier career at Williams in 2010 then spent two stints at Force India with a brief spell at Sauber sandwiched between them. Seat time at Racing Point and Aston Martin came next, and since 2023 Hulkenburg has been a full-time driver for Haas F1.
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Let’s hope that Audi has set its sights a bit higher when it comes to choosing its still-unnamed second driver because despite taking part in 211 F1 races in 14 years, Hulkenberg has never won a race or even stepped on the podium (he holds the record for the most starts without a podium finish).
Okay, so he wasn’t driving for the front-running teams, and I’m no F1 expert, but that doesn’t sound like the record of someone you want to pin your F1 hopes on if you’re Audi. That’s not to say Hulkenberg isn’t a great driver or a winner. During a break from F1 in 2015 he won the 24 Hours of Le Mans on his first attempt at the wheel of a Porsche 919 Hybrid. His team principal on that occasion was Andreas Seidl, who just so happens to be the team principal at Sauber and will also hold the same position at the Audi F1 team. So maybe there is hope, after all.
Note: the car images seen here are of a mockup car created by Audi to showcase its “launch livery”, not the real car it will race in 2026.
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