Audi’s Formula 1 boss said entering the sport via a legacy team has proved more difficult than starting with a clean slate, as the German carmaker runs up against more established rivals.
“The challenge is to transform what was a former private small team into a winning team,” Mattia Binotto, chief executive officer and team principal of the Audi Revolut F1 team, said at Bloomberg House Miami ahead of the city’s grand prix on Sunday.
“Sometimes it’s even more difficult than starting from scratch, because then you are a small team with the wrong culture, the wrong mindset.”
Audi took a majority stake in Sauber Motorsport AG in 2024 and full control of the team for the current season.
It currently sits eighth in the Constructors’ Championship with two points after three races, underscoring the steep learning curve to take on the likes of Ferrari, McLaren and current leader Mercedes.
“F1 is the pinnacle of the motorsports,” Binotto said.
“It’s a different league, the cars are different animals and the complexity are certainly a lot higher. So the challenge now is the most difficult for Audi, and we want to win.”
To help fund the F1 venture, Audi secured equity investment from the Qatar Investment Authority in 2024. The company is open to selling another stake in the team in the future, Gernot Döllner, chief executive officer of Volkswagen AG’s Audi division, previously told Bloomberg.
Audi joined F1 with the sport growing in popularity, helped by the success of the Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive.
The company is betting visibility in F1 will attract more women and younger customers for its cars.
The buzz around the sport is also drawing investors. The Mercedes F1 team sold a stake at a roughly $6 billion valuation last year, while current champion McLaren was valued at more than $4 billion.
Binotto said the races in Miami, and later in the season in Las Vegas and Austin, Texas, are vital for Audi to perform given the size of the US market.
The F1 circuit resumes this weekend after a hiatus in April, when races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were called off due to the conflict in the Middle East.
“Expectations need to be managed,” Binotto said. “If you look at the start of our season, it has been OK fighting in the midfield.
Big competitors are doing worse than us.” Getting it wrong in F1 is easy, he added.
Unlike the majority of F1 teams, Audi is based in Switzerland, where Binotto said salaries are higher than in the UK and Italy.
For the first edition of Audi’s engineering academy, it had over 6,000 applications for six engineer positions.
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