Audi vs Porsche: the family feud behind F1 dream – MPH
Audi is realising its F1 aim, while Porsche is floundering – the intense competition between the sister brands is only amplifying the intrigue
Audi is confirmed as taking over Sauber for 2026 – Porsche hasn't found a team partner
Audi
With Audi confirming its partnership with Sauber for its F1 entry in 2026, it still leaves hanging in the air the question of what will become of the originally planned parallel entry of Audi’s sister brand Porsche.
It’s a much less innocuous question than it might seem, one that is loaded with corporate intrigue, jealousies and competition.
It’s significant that Audi will buy a majority shareholding in Sauber; this will be a true works team, very much part of the main company, not merely a technical partnership. There is an engine manufacturing plant in Neuburg an der Donau, with a couple of hundred employees already, headed up by Adam Baker, an Australian engineer who was last in F1 with the BMW F1 project (which was also, of course, Sauber-based). This is a full-on factory effort, more so even than Mercedes (which owns only one-third of the team which represents it in F1).
Porsche too wishes to be a full-blown works team – and that was a key part of why its planned 50/50 partnership with Red Bull fell through a few months ago, with the Milton Keynes-based team uncomfortable with the level of control the German manufacturer sought.
Audi is already pushing ahead with its F1 project – Porsche may have to suffer ignominy of rebadging
Audi
“The premise was always that a partnership would be based on an equal footing, which would include not only an engine partnership but also the team,” the Porsche statement in September said. “This could not be achieved. With the finalised rule changes, the racing series nevertheless remains an attractive environment for Porsche and will continue to be monitored.”
The thorny questions of ownership and control was also why Audi’s early talks with McLaren went nowhere and probably why Porsche’s will too. Which would appear to leave two possible options for Porsche: Williams or AlphaTauri.
But Porsche has an additional problem. Unlike Audi, it doesn’t have a power unit under development, nor does it currently have the facilities to create one. Either the parent VW Group insists that Audi share its power unit with Porsche (possible, given that the new VW boss is the former Porsche boss, but horribly conflicted for reasons of prestige) or Porsche begins investing in a big hurry and acquires not just the facilities and staff but also the expensive dynos necessary. It would seem to be a close-to-impossible timeline. But it’s an exceptional company and doubtless a highly-motivated one too… don’t rule it out completely.
There is enormous needle between these two VW Group brands, which are run as separate companies. It can be imagined how Porsche, nominally a higher prestige brand than Audi, would be extremely uncomfortable putting its name on a power unit developed by its ‘lesser’ sibling.
Ironically the Audi power unit under development began life as a Porsche prototype, canned in 2016 after the forecasted change of regulations (to something similar to what will now come in for 2026) didn’t happen. At which point Porsche divested itself of everything associated with the project, including much of the staff, many of whom transferred to Audi.
Whether or not Porsche’s dilemma is resolved, the level of full control sought by both entities is interesting. The two dominant teams of the last decade and a bit, Red Bull and Mercedes, have not been controlled and managed by an automotive company. Not in any way at Red Bull and only financially at Mercedes. They are both specialist racing teams which have worn several different badges, pledged many different allegiances.
Back when Renault won the 2005 and ’06 titles, it did so with a specialist racing team, managed and controlled by a contractor, Flavio Briatore, not by any of the automotive company (though the factory did provide the engines). In fact, the last time a true factory automotive team won the world championship was in 1955!
Now Audi and Porsche are each seeking to do something which BMW and Toyota each ultimately failed at and which hasn’t been done successfully for almost seven decades. It’s a very confident approach…