As German manufacturer Audi works to build the foundations needed for its official arrival as a works team in 2026, it has not gone unnoticed that the current Sauber F1 results are far from ideal.
The Swiss company currently sits 10th and last in the F1 constructors’ championship and is the only team yet to score a point this season.
While the operation will look very different when he switches to Audi in two years, Binotto says the team cannot ignore what is happening now.
“We can’t afford that,” Binotto said at the Italian Grand Prix. “I think this is the team that has to become, in the future, a winning team. And the only way to do that is to start moving up, to progress. We have to train our muscles for the future.”
“So, yeah, I think we definitely have to improve. It’s important for ourselves, it’s important for the team. It’s important for the brand. It’s important for our partners. And we can’t kind of accept the current position.”
Binotto says that while there is a lot to be done in the long term to get Audi into a position where it can challenge for race wins, a big effort is needed to turn it around now.
“We cannot hide behind the fact that we were last and second to last in the Zandvoort race and in qualifying. [qui]in the same positions, at a certain distance from the cars in front of us. So, we have to work hard to improve.”
“We have to balance all our priorities and our efforts in the short, medium and long term. But I don’t think our position today is comfortable for us at all. It’s very painful.”
“As I said, we have to train our muscles and improve because solid foundations are not created in a day. It is a team that must continuously progress every day, step by step. So, I would say to start as soon as possible.”
Binotto officially began working at Audi/Sauber on August 1 and has spent the last few weeks assessing the situation.
Valtteri Bottas, Stake F1 Team KICK Sauber C44
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
The initial verdict is that there is a lot of work to be done to transform the team into the kind of winning operation he experienced at Ferrari when he was team principal.
“You can’t see everything in a couple of weeks,” he explained. “You certainly only get a first impression of what you can find or see, both in Hinwil for the chassis and in Neuburg for the powertrain.”
“But I think there are fantastic people. We have clear intentions and goals, to become a winning team. But certainly there is a lot to do, this is the first feedback.”
“We are competing with teams that have been in F1 for many years. They are big organizations, with ups and downs. And that is not the case with us.”
“We need to grow in terms of people, organization, tools, processes, methodologies and structures. We need to unite, certainly, what we are doing in Hinwil with what we are doing in Neuburg on the powertrain.”
“And it’s also about culture and mentality, because to become a winning team you need to change your mentality about what’s needed.”
Binotto believes it will be several years before he can imagine Audi being ready for success. Audi CEO Gernot Doellner admitted that, having better understood the challenge of F1, he has accepted that winning could take longer than he initially thought.
“We see our F1 project as a long-term project,” he said. “After I joined Audi in September last year, we did an evaluation of our project, which ended with the setup we found, and maybe we also recalibrated our timeline to make it more realistic.”
“We can’t give specifics because we’re still discussing different aspects, but I think we’re being quite realistic about the timing.”
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