Here's the thing about Audi's season right now: they are perpetually on the doorstep of points, only to watch the door slam shut. Nico Hulkenberg dragged that machine home to P11 at the United States Grand Prix in Austin, marking the third time in the last four races that the German has finished in that exact frustrating position. It is becoming a punishing theme for the squad.
That recent midfield pace owes a lot to the upgrade package bolted on in Baku, which dragged them directly into the fight. Yet, for all that speed, the rewards are stubbornly scarce. They have scored just once in the last four Grands Prix, courtesy of Hulkenberg's P8 in Singapore which yielded four points.
It would have all [been] dependent on how with a good start [where] we would have come out, we can only speculate but it is what it is now.
Things were already stacked against the garage at the Circuit of The Americas before the lights even went out. Gabriel Bortoleto took a raft of penalties for new power unit components and started from the back of the grid, though the Brazilian should at least have enough elements in his pool now to survive the rest of the season without further pain. That left Hulkenberg as the sole spearhead for points from P11 on the grid, only for a disastrous launch to instantly derail his afternoon.
“You can’t call that a bad start, it went into anti-stall so yeah, that’s more than a bad start,” Hulkenberg said afterwards.
“A strange one as normally the anti-stall kicks in instantly, and I did a few metres and then it kicked in. Sounded and felt a bit odd, but obviously don’t know what happened, [I'm] fresh out of the car so I need to go back and see what happened and why. But of course, it didn’t help our cause for the race.”
Power unit reliability has haunted Audi all year. As the sole operator of their own power plant, they are starved of the deep telemetry reservoirs enjoyed by Mercedes and Ferrari, who feed multiple customer outfits. While Hulkenberg's DNFs are mercifully behind him—Silverstone was his last retirement—launches off the line continue to bite them hard, leaving both drivers scrambling from the get-go.
“You saw again today we were quite close pace-wise with Pierre [Gasly] and with Liam [Lawson], and obviously we came from behind after that start but not sure we could have done a whole lot more from there,” Hulkenberg added.
“It would have all [been] dependent on how with a good start [where] we would have come out, we can only speculate but it is what it is now.”
In the Constructors' Championship, Audi sits eighth, sitting seven points behind Haas in the fight for seventh. The raw pace might favour the German operation over the American team, but the actual point-scoring windows are vanishingly narrow. Down in the garage, Bortoleto quietly salvaged a clean afternoon from his grid penalty purgatory.
“We did a good race, overtook some cars, kept it clean at the same time you know, no damage. I had a bit of fun overtaking people and being out there, trying my best, putting in some good [racing]. Obviously, it is difficult to recover everything starting from the back,” the Brazilian said.
Bortoleto ultimately crossed the stripe in 13th, mirroring his teammate with five P11 finishes to his name this year. It is a season defined by being painfully close, not helped by strong reliability and form from Racing Bulls further up the road. Even so, this is a fundamentally solid campaign for Audi's new-generation machine. The Baku upgrades hit the mark, the driver pairing is cohesive, and the team has successfully weathered the departure of Jonathan Wheatley. The base is there for 2027; now they just need to turn near-misses into actual points.
