– The Audi comeback continues. After Nico Hülkenberg scored another world championship point as tenth at the Formula 1 race in Madrid, the factory team scored points for the fifth time in the last six races. In the fight for P7 in the world championship, they are now only four points behind Haas.
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Race director Allan McNish explains in this context that Audi is currently actually much stronger than the eighth place in the world championship would suggest. He believes “that the position in the championship and the points scored there do not reflect the performance potential”.
Audi is only not further ahead “because we had to struggle with reliability problems at the beginning,” McNish recalls. In fact, in the first eight races of the year, they only managed to get into the top 10 once. Gabriel Bortoleto was ninth directly at the season opener in Melbourne.
However, this was followed by seven races in a row without points, during which Audi temporarily fell behind Williams in the world championship. Meanwhile, the traditional team has left them quite clearly behind through the recent points streak.
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“Have we exceeded expectations? Yes, probably in some way,” says McNish proudly. Because after the difficult start to the season, Audi is now a regular top-10 candidate – which has also raised internal expectations.
Why “frustration” is positive for McNish
For example, McNish sees it as a good sign that the team was disappointed in Madrid last weekend to have narrowly missed qualifying for Q3 with P11 and P12.
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“This little bit of frustration was probably one of the best things I’ve seen because it shows that [the staff] have a different vision than perhaps at the beginning of the season,” says the race director.
Or in other words: At the beginning of the season, Audi would have been happy just to reach Q3 early on. Meanwhile, top-10 results have become almost so natural that they are disappointed when it doesn’t work out once.
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According to McNish, the good results of recent weeks and months are also a sign of the progress happening behind the scenes. This trend is expected to be confirmed once again at the upcoming race in Azerbaijan.
“If you look at the average cornering speed in Baku, the first, second, and third sectors should all be pretty good,” McNish explains optimistically, even though it is “no surprise” that they might be a bit weak on the long straights.
“But I think we should be pretty well positioned there,” he explains optimistically. If Audi scores points there again, they could take another step towards P7 in the world championship. Because while Audi has recently been regularly found in the top 10, competitor Haas has been without points for eight races now.
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