The German brand will return to F1 as a motorist: Ferrari and Mercedes’ ok to simpler power units is decisive. Volkswagen will be able to take advantage of the new Milton Keynes factory and the Honda legacy that will remain until 2025. Audi with McLaren?
The rumors of recent months were well founded. But now the hypotheses have become facts: Porsche, the flagship of the Volkswagen giant, will return to Formula 1 from 2026, when it will race with a new generation of hybrid engines still under study. A big return, from the front door, because the German brand will be placed on the sides of the Red Bull, which will end its relationship with Honda in 2025. There could not have been a more iconic and evocative combination. The McLaren of the early 80s comes to mind, equipped with the formidable Turbo Porsche Tag engines, which won three world titles with Niki Lauda and Alain Prost. And certainly the Milton Keynes team will want to keep tradition high, after the four World Championships in a row won with Renault’s aspirated engines at the time of Sebastian Vettel (2010-2013) and the one snatched from Mercedes in 2021 thanks to Max Verstappen and power unit Honda.
porsche in f1, the broad agreement
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All the obstacles that had been at the beginning of the negotiations, on the discussion tables that involved Stefano Domenicali’s Formula 1 and the teams already present in the championship, were overcome with common good will, in the interest of sport. And so Mercedes and Ferrari have accepted that Porsche (Volkswagen) will enter the competition, being able to take advantage of the knowledge developed so far by Honda and the infrastructure that the team financed by the magnate Dietrich Mateschitz is building on the Red Bull “campus” in Milton Keynes to set up an engine department capable of operating autonomously when there is a regulatory change. A nice technical advantage for the Germans, which will also translate into huge economic savings, compared to the billion dollars (!) Invested by the big teams during the hybrid era. Ferrari could have used its veto right but did not. The entry of another major manufacturer was vital for F1 and no one objected.
already in le mans
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The fact that the situation has been unlocked will also lead in a short time to the approval of the new rules for the 2026 power units, which will abandon the current complex electrification system (which recovers kinetic energy and turbine exhaust gases) for an architecture simpler hybrid, based on the battery pack only (Kers). This too was a concession to allow the entry of another “competitor”. On the other hand, the hybrid technology present on today’s power units, which will be “frozen” in development at the beginning of the 2022 World Cup and until the end of 2025, had little possibility of industrial transfer to normal production cars. Porsche, meanwhile, is already developing a twin-turbo V8 with 500 kW batteries to participate in the World Endurance Championship in the LMDh category from 2023 (using the standard chassis produced by another manufacturer) and try to win back the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Therefore the Germans will work in parallel to the F1 project, taking advantage of what Red Bull is setting up at its home: the purchase campaign also involved numerous motorists named snatched from Mercedes, including the new technical director Ben Hodgkinson. In addition, Red Bull bought the intellectual property of Honda power units and hired the engineers of the racing department located in Great Britain. The fact that Helmut Marko has specified that Honda will manage the power units in Japan until 2025 seems a “strategic” statement.
double volkswagen in f1
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Volkswagen’s ambitions don’t stop with the return of Porsche. The intention would be to equip at least two teams. Operation that would make it possible to create a showcase for another brand of the group: therefore Audi could in turn enter F1 in 2026, with other purposes of promotion on the markets, linked to a historic team like McLaren, which today receives customer power units. from Mercedes. In this case, however, the negotiation would be more articulated and complex due to Woking’s desire to look for a partner who would help finance both the sporting activity and the automotive branch of the company.
January 29 – 09:57
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