Glock recalls difficulties at Toyota: “Audi will face a big challenge” | FP

Audi ever closer to its debut

The debut of Audi in Formula 1 he is expected for the season 2026the year in which the German company will assume total control of the current one Sauber. In the meantime, in Hinwil, the foundations are not lacking to organize this debut in the best possible way, starting with the official announcement of Nico Hülkenberg and the more recent announcement of Stefano Sordo as Performance Director, with the second driver’s name still today surrounded by numerous question marks.

Not competitive right away

In any case, Audi’s arrival was welcomed by both enthusiasts and former Circus drivers, including Timo Glock. However, the 42-year-old German highlighted some obstacles that could arise for the house ‘four circles’very similar to the ones he saw in Toyota, the team with which he competed in the 2008-2009 seasons before the withdrawal of the Japanese manufacturer. Spoken on the podcast Formula for Successthe Glock fear is related to headquarters of the two realitieswith Sauber in Switzerland and Audi in Germany: “I think they have a great challenge to facebut on the other hand, I believe they have the power to do so – commented – Andres Seidl knows exactly what he needs to be a successful team, but of course it will be a challenge for them. I don’t expect them to be immediately competitive in the first year“.

The Toyota experience

Going into more detail about this problem, Glock retraced the difficulties experienced by Toyota, a Japanese manufacturer that entered F1 in 2002 but with the factory Cologne, Germany. A distance that had a negative impact on competitiveness and, above all, on decision-making processes: “I never thought this could be a problem for us – He admitted – when I arrived at Toyota the facilities were really very large. There was everything you could imagine to build a Formula 1 car. We had two wind tunnels. There was everything you could think of for research and development, it really was everything. I was there to drive that F1 car and to represent Toyota as a manufacturer, as well as all the 1,200 or so people who worked in Cologne. At first it was a real overload of work, but I realized very quickly that the problem was Toyota, not the people, who were really very good. The problem was decision making: decisions that had to be made in a very short time took too much time. For example, we had some updates to the car, which were in a sort of gray area, and then they were blocked by Japan, so they had to double check everything with Japan. I remember a rear wing locking at the right time, as if it were a DRS effect. We were already using it in the straight line tests and it was ready to be used. He gave us at least half a second. In Japan they stopped him because he was in a gray area. They said: “No, no, no, we don’t want to be disqualified, we can’t go in that direction”. This thing prevented us from taking the last step.”