Audi’s first laps of 2026: Hill says “all bets are off” as new era looms
Barcelona’s pit lane doesn’t lie. In the shadows of Montmeló, Audi rolled its R26 out for a quiet shakedown and promptly lit a fuse under the 2026 conversation. Behind closed doors, a handful of phone clips did the rounds and Audi marked the moment with a simple message: we’re officially rolling.
First day. First laps. First chance for the drivers to feel what’s coming. For a team stepping into a brand-new ruleset and a rebadged Sauber operation, it’s a statement as much as a systems check.
Damon Hill likes what he’s seeing — or more accurately, hearing. “It’s very exciting,” the 1996 World Champion told talkSPORT, tipping the new-look grid to spring a “complete surprise” once the regulation reset lands. In his view, Audi’s early run matters. The team has been quietly building out of Hinwil, with the manufacturer’s weight now very visible, and Friday’s filming day at Barcelona was a neat flex before anyone else has shown their hand.
“They’ve already run their car in Barcelona for a couple of laps,” Hill said. “It sounded really nice, actually. We weren’t allowed to get close – only went off of some spies with their mobile phones.”
It’s not just Audi, though. Hill flagged Cadillac’s arrival as another spark in the powder. However the fine print shakes out, the idea of a US manufacturer lining up on the grid alongside a heavyweight like Audi has the paddock’s attention. The last time F1 changed this much, Brawn GP walked in from nowhere and left with both titles.
And that’s really the point. The 2026 cars are a deep clean, not a tidy-up. Active aero enters F1 for the first time, the power units shift to an even 50/50 split between electrical energy and the internal combustion engine, and the way drivers manage a lap will change with it. Energy deployment, drag profiles, packaging — all of it is being reimagined. Continuity from this ground-effect era won’t be guaranteed.
“Yes, you could see a change of the guard,” Hill said. “We could see a complete surprise. Something like when Jenson Button won with Brawn — they surprised everyone because they saw through the regulations.”
Then there’s Adrian Newey. Hill didn’t tiptoe around it: “The master of seeing through the regulations is Adrian Newey, who’s gone to Aston Martin. He’s been working on this project now for a good 18 months or so.” The implication is obvious. If anyone can stitch the new aero and energy picture into a lap time, it’s the man with the well-thumbed notebook and a habit of ruining everyone else’s winter.
Hill also referenced the wider shake-up around Red Bull, noting Christian Horner’s exit and Newey’s departure from Milton Keynes, and added that Max Verstappen remains the fixed point they’ve left behind. Whether those changes ultimately blunt Red Bull’s edge in 2026 is a different question, but in a rules reset, stability and continuity can be as valuable as clever ideas — and Newey’s move tilts that calculus.
For Audi, getting the R26 rolling now is free mileage in a world where every new sensor trace matters. Shakedowns are deliberately light — think systems checks, cooling verifications, brake bedding, basic aero correlation — but they’re a line in the sand. If Audi’s already ticking boxes in January, it suggests a program that’s running to its own clock rather than the panic of the pack. That’s not a guarantee of pace. It is, however, the sort of early rhythm that can pay off when the first meaningful aero maps start lining up with CFD.
“All bets are off for this year,” Hill said of the run-in to 2026. “We have no idea who is going to have the form… The power units are completely different… The way the cars will be driven, the way they’re designed, the way they work aerodynamically is completely different.”
Strip away the hype and that’s the takeaway. The 2026 cars won’t reward last year’s answers. They’ll reward the team that threads energy usage with aero states and keeps the car stable when the wings wake up and go to sleep. Some will nail it. Some will get lost. One or two might stumble onto a silver bullet.
If Audi’s Barcelona laps looked modest, that’s fine. If the engine note in those grainy clips sounded clean, that’s interesting. If the team’s already collecting the boring, essential data before most rivals have even wheeled their prototypes out of the paint shop — that’s the kind of quiet win that can snowball.
Sixteen months from a restart, it already feels like the grid’s been tossed in the air. And that’s the fun bit.
