Audi defends 'serious' target despite previous F1 team failures

Audi chief Mattia Binotto has launched a strong defence of the team's public goal to be challenging for the F1 championship in 2030.

The Ingolstadt-based concern is entering grand prix racing for the first time in 2026, having taken over the Sauber team and its Hinwil base.

The team has been quite vocal in naming the 2030 season, the fifth it will compete in, as when it expects to be fighting for the world championship, but this is a dangerous claim for teams to make.

Upon its return in 2016, Renault claimed it wanted to be fighting for the titles after 100 races, which should have been the 2021 season-opener.

However, by this time, the Renault name had only achieved two 2020 podiums and had been rebadged as Alpine for '21, with the '100-race plan' then reimagined for the new brand. 

This too has not yielded the desired results, although Pierre Gasly does believe given the radical nature of the new 2026 rules, he could be a contender for the world championship, with Alpine now also using Mercedes power units.

When questioned about why the team had decided to set itself a firm deadline to be championship challengers, Binotto explained how first, the team needed to prove itself as a "strong and serious" rival to established front-running outfits, such as McLaren and Red Bull.

"We've got a final objective of 2030, and we need to set milestones or intermediate stations on our climbing to the top of the mountain," Binotto told media, including RacingNews365, at the Audi launch. 

"As Sauber last year, we set an internal objective for the team, which was aiming to score points at every race, which we finally achieved from race nine onwards, which was a clear objective.

"We discussed internally what the objective for 2026 should be, and what should be our first intermediate station, and whether we should measure it in terms of ranking in the championship or the number of points scored at the end of the season? 

"Should we say we should score more points than in 2025, knowing it is a brand-new team with a brand-new power train and new regulations, and finally, we decided differently.

"We decided that for us, the most important thing in 2026 is to become a serious competitor, and that is about behaviour, about perception and by the end of the season, how other teams see and perceive us as a strong competitor for the future, and becoming serious in terms of competing for wins.

"It is about attitude, it is about staying humble but learning from mistakes and failures, and I would be happy if we were perceived as a strong and serious competitor."