Audi follows Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren: A disadvantage for Ferrari?
General
- Ludo van Denderen
For Switzerland's Sauber, it is an immense step. Indeed, Peter Sauber, the founder of the Formula 1 team, was against it for many decades: opening his team's factory outside of Switzerland. Sauber was and is Swiss, was his motto. But times are changing; Sauber is becoming Audi, and the German manufacturer's ambitions are sky-high.
The team led by Mattia Binotto wants to move to the top of the grid as soon as possible from 2026, fighting for Grand Prix wins and even world titles. Those goals can only be achieved with the best drivers, the best facilities and the best people. That is precisely what Sauber has always lacked.
Audi can compete with the top teams
In Formula 1, almost all teams have settled (at least partly) around London. So the people working for those teams also live in this area. Admittedly, good F1 personnel change employers regularly, but then these people usually do so at other teams in the area. Picking up their entire possessions and settling down in Switzerland, it rarely happens - or there must be a particularly high pay.
Audi - who is working on the F1 project in Germany and Switzerland anyway - knows this too, which is precisely why it decided to open a facility in the UK. For the first time in the team's long history, it will be possible to attract talent without these people having to move to central Europe.
Especially if the salary is good - and Audi is still in the process of building towards the budget cap, which means that more is often likely to be possible than at the top teams - then a move from, say, Red Bull Racing or McLaren suddenly becomes attractive.
Ferrari only remaining 'dissident'
After Italian Racing Bulls already opened a facility in the UK, Ferrari is currently the only remaining F1 team not represented in the British territory. That is unlikely to change either. Gradually, that could be seen as a slight disadvantage compared to the competition.
Admittedly, Ferrari has less to fear from a defection to another team - after all, the employee would then have to move to the other side of Europe - but picking off other top talent becomes a bit more difficult with Audi present in England.
This was already evident last year, when Ferrari hoped to bring in Adrian Newey after the designer left Red Bull Racing. Reportedly, one of the defining reasons for the Brit not to go to Ferrari was that he did not want to move to Italy and away from the UK. Had Ferrari had a facility in Britain, that choice might have been different.
This article was written in collaboration with Norberto Mujica.
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