Audi's F1 Team Heads to Austin for the First Time, Seven Points From Seventh Place
The Audi Revolut F1 Team arrives at Circuit of The Americas off its first Sprint points in Singapore, sitting eighth in the standings with six races left.
Audi's Formula 1 team races at Circuit of The Americas for the first time this weekend, and it arrives in Austin with the best form of its debut season. The Audi Revolut F1 Team sits eighth in the constructors' standings on 23 points, seven behind Haas, with six rounds left to close the gap.
Austin is the second of three U.S. stops for Audi this year, after Miami in May and before Las Vegas in November. It is also the first race in Texas for either of F1's two newest manufacturer-backed entries: while Audi has 23 points on the board, Cadillac's debut car is still looking for its first point.
Why the timing matters
The team comes to Texas straight from Singapore, where Nico Hulkenberg finished seventh in the Sprint for Audi's first Sprint points and then eighth in the Grand Prix, matching the team's best result of the year. Audi says it has now recorded four top-eight finishes in 2026. Gabriel Bortoleto retired early in Singapore with what the team described as a suspected gearbox issue.
That lifted Audi to 23 points. According to the standings after Singapore, Haas sits seventh on 30, Racing Bulls fifth on 113, Williams ninth on 12, and Aston Martin tenth on 7. Every position in the constructors' table changes the prize-money split, so a seven-point gap over the final six races is the team's real target in Austin, not a podium.
COTA is familiar ground for at least one of the drivers. Hulkenberg has scored points there six times, with sixth place in 2013 and 2018 as his best, according to the team. Bortoleto drove his first Austin race last season.
The track, in U.S. terms
The 3.43-mile (5.513 km) circuit opened for F1 in 2012 and hosts a 56-lap, 191.6-mile (308.405 km) race. The lap record of 1:36.169 was set by Charles Leclerc in 2019. Turn 1 sits at the top of a roughly 820-foot (250 m) uphill run from the start line, and the team calls it one of the tightest first corners on the calendar, which is why the opening lap at COTA so often produces both passes and contact.
Audi points out that COTA borrows from classic circuits: Turns 3 through 6 echo Silverstone's Maggotts-Becketts and the Suzuka esses, Turns 12 to 15 recall Hockenheim's stadium section, and Turns 16 to 18 are modeled on Turn 8 at Istanbul Park. The team also notes the Turkish Grand Prix returns to the F1 calendar in 2027. Audi says the event draws around 400,000 fans over a race weekend; that crowd is also where Ford's Raptor Rally road trip ends this weekend.
This weekend runs the standard format, with two practice sessions on Friday, October 23, a third practice and qualifying on Saturday, October 24, and the race on Sunday, October 25. Austin is round 18 of 23 and opens a triple-header with Mexico City and São Paulo; with Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi to follow, Audi faces six races in seven weekends.
What's at stake beyond the track
The U.S. matters to Audi for more than ticket sales. The brand's U.S. deliveries fell 15 percent in the third quarter, and three American race weekends are the most visible marketing Audi has in the market this year. The team's junior program also has something to race for: Emma Felbermayr is second in the F1 Academy standings, 48 points behind leader Alisha Palmowski, with two rounds and five races remaining, according to Audi.
Audi hasn't said anything about car updates for Austin. Max Verstappen won last year's race at COTA, so the fight at the front is unlikely to involve the newcomer. The number that matters for Audi on Sunday is whether the gap to Haas is smaller than seven when the cars are loaded for Mexico.
