Nico Hülkenberg didn’t need to say much during Audi’s low-key Barcelona shakedown. The grin did plenty of the talking. After a decade of being the paddock’s dependable plug-in, the German is now the face of a proper manufacturer project — and, if one report is accurate, he’s also sitting on one of the more intriguing incentive structures on the 2026 grid.
Austrian outlet OE24 claims Hülkenberg’s Audi contract includes a performance clause worth €50,000 for every point he scores in 2026. In a sport where contracts are sealed tighter than a parc fermé garage door, the detail is unconfirmed by Audi — but it tracks with how top-line deals are increasingly shaped: a respectable base, then a sharp, motivating bonus ladder that turns Sunday outcomes into hard currency.
It also neatly fits the story Audi wants to tell with this programme. This isn’t a vanity entry. They’ve rebranded what was Sauber and, crucially for 2026, they’re arriving as a works team for the first time, with Audi power in the R26. If you’re trying to pull a long-standing midfield operation into the manufacturer era, you pay for performance — and you make sure the driver feels the upside directly.
On paper, €50,000 a point sounds almost comic until you do the maths. Hülkenberg scored 51 points last season, including 15 for a podium at Silverstone. Apply that bonus rate to a similar return and you’re looking at €2.55 million on top. That’s not “nice-to-have” money; that’s the sort of figure that turns a solid season into one of the better-paying years of a driver’s career, even before you factor in whatever base salary Audi has agreed.
And it’s not as though point-by-point bonuses are some novelty clause. F1 has form here. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s earnings were widely discussed last year in the context of performance-related payments, and the sport has long had examples of contracts that effectively turned points into a payslip. The most infamous reference point remains Kimi Räikkönen’s Lotus stint, where bonuses piled up to the point it became a political and financial problem — right down to boycott threats.
For Audi and Hülkenberg, though, the tone is very different. This is less about an awkward bill landing on a team’s desk, more about setting the cultural expectations of a new factory effort. In 2026, points aren’t just points; they’re the public metric of whether the Audi badge belongs on the grid. A per-point payout bakes that pressure into the cockpit.
The timing matters too. The 2026 reset is so extensive that nobody can pretend they know the competitive order. Active aerodynamics arrives, the new power units lean on sustainable fuel and a 50/50 split between electric and combustion power, and two new engine suppliers join the party — Audi among them. The usual “year one will be painful” storyline might still be true, but the rules are wide enough that a team can leap if it’s organised, brave and slightly lucky.
That’s why the Hülkenberg clause — if it exists as reported — feels less like a gimmick and more like an internal statement: Audi believes there are points on the table early, not just learning laps. It’s also a clever way of managing risk. If the car is a handful and points are scarce, costs stay contained. If the car’s a hit, the driver gets paid handsomely — and the team is probably delighted to pay it because the championship position, prize money and credibility will dwarf the outlay.
There’s another angle here, too: psychology. A per-point deal doesn’t just reward the headline results; it rewards the scrappy Sundays that define the midfield. P10 on a day when the car doesn’t deserve it. A risky one-stopper when others blink. A bruising opening stint to keep track position. Those are the races where veterans like Hülkenberg earn their keep, and they’re also the races where a manufacturer project builds momentum in public.
Damon Hill, having caught a glimpse of Audi’s early running, hinted the Hinwil operation could become one of the season’s surprises. He described the Barcelona shakedown as a first taste of Audi influence beginning to “embellish” the existing team — a choice of word that felt deliberate: not a total reinvention overnight, but a steady layering of resources, standards and direction.
Audi will present the R26 publicly in Berlin on Tuesday. That’s the marketing moment — the glossy photos, the clean statements, the promise of a new era. But the more revealing detail, at least from the outside, may be in how they’ve structured the incentives behind the scenes.
If Hülkenberg really is on €50,000 a point, then every time that car drags itself into the top 10 this year, he won’t just be moving Audi up the standings. He’ll be ringing the cash register — one hard-earned point at a time.
