F1 News
Audi set 'no deadline' for Sauber to recruit driver alongside Hulkenberg
The current Stake F1 Sauber team (that will turn into Audi come the 2026) regulation change still need to sign a driver to compete together with Nico Hulkenberg from the next season onwards. Alessandro Alunni Bravi has explained the process behind his team signing the second driver.
Bravi, the team representative of Stake F1 and the managing director of Sauber, has underlined that there is no deadline for finding the best option to race alongside Nico Hulkenberg from the '25 season onwards. "[There is] not a deadline. We have a target that I think we need to try to find the very best option," the Italian said.
He added that as the situation on the current market changes from day to day and week to week, his team are monitoring the events. "We say that we want to try to have the best pair of drivers available in the market. It's not just depending on our team. It's depending, of course, on the availabilities, depending on many factors. We have seen that the market is quite fluid and each day we see in the press, you know, new names and new combinations."
"I think the target is to have the very best drivers available for us for a long-term project like the Audi F1 team project," Bravi named the highest criteria for the team.
Given that Bravi declared there is 'no deadline', the team could wait to see whether Carlos Sainz would eventually like to join the team, or would like to opt for a different option. Earlier, it has been announced that the first driver brought in for the Audi project was Nico Hulkenberg for Haas, while Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou are already rumoured to look for options elsewhere.