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Audi will join the F1 grid as an official constructor alongside, Ferrari, Mercedes, Aston Martin, Alpine, and others. The German brand would be another automotive giant that would be making its way to the pinnacle of motorsport intending to challenge the status quo.
F1 has a history of automotive giants entering the sport and making an impact by becoming a frontrunner. This is precisely what Audi has in mind as it gets ready with the preparations to become a top team in the sport.
There is however one constructor on the grid that Audi needs to learn from, especially for things one should not do when competing in F1. That team is Alpine, another constructor in the sport that has been hugely disappointing. In this feature, let's take a look at some of the key mistakes the French manufacturer made that the German manufacturer should avoid.
#1 Complacency
The biggest issue with Alpine was the fact that the brand thought that it was eventually going to win. There was this sense of entitlement with which Renault entered the sport and ran its operation.
This was evident in the fact that the team had a poor V6 Turbo, and for a long time, the requisite resources to get it up to par were either unavailable or not put together. The brand entered the sport with the thought that since it was a constructor and everything was in-house, success would come, F1 doesn't work that way whatsoever.
#2 A team run from the boardroom
The biggest problem for Alpine and one that Audi has to try to avoid is running the operation from the boardroom. If the brand ends up doing that, it's heading for a disaster, because the biggest problem when you try running operations from the boardroom is that the interests and directions don't align. More than that, the board is neither aware of the ground realities nor does it want to put in the effort.
If Audi wants to be successful, then the brand needs to put a CEO and a team principal in place and then just let them do the thing.
#3 Winning isn't cheap in F1
There is a famous incident mentioned by Adrian Newey in his book, where Red Bull senior management went to see Carlos Ghosn of Renault in 2014 as the brand's power unit was below par.
When the team's senior management was blatantly told that the brand wasn't interested in investing in the power unit, Newey was the first to lose interest in the sport. Alpine has been the same in that aspect, especially if we compare the kind of investment and facilities that every other top team has on the grid.
You compare it with Alpine and you see a team unwilling to put in the kind of money that's a bare minimum for success. Audi has to be very careful on the same front and cannot assume that an underinvested team will be successful in the sport.
#4 It's going to take time for Audi to be successful
Remember the haphazard manner in which key people and arguably the stalwarts of F1, Otmar Szafneur and Alain Permaine were removed from the team at such short notice? This kind of thing does not set the right example because that move showed impatience when it came to results.
For a long time, the Alpine operation was underfunded. With Otmar, the team set a five-year plan, but all of a sudden, in the second season, we had wholesale changes again.
The brand wasn't willing to stick to the timelines set by Otmar, and as a result, the entire team collapsed. It's been well over a year since that happened and we're looking at the French team being transformed from the 4th team to a literal backmarker. Audi needs to be careful with this as well because success won't happen overnight. You will need to spend a lot of time trying to understand how the sport works.
More than that. The German manufacturer will have to sit back and wait until the F1 team rises to the level attained by its competitors. Hence, Audi needs to remain patient as success will come slowly and it's going to take time.
#5 Assemble a team of winners and leave it to them
Alain Prost was one of the names associated with the Alpine/Renault project when it began. By the time he left, he was disgruntled and angry at the political landscape that the team had. We've had various people from different walks of life who joined this team. There was Laurent Rossi, who had no prior experience in F1.
There was Marcin Budkowski, who also joined and left before he could have an impact. Then arguably the biggest name that joined and was forced out was Otmar Szafneur. Otmar had built a career in F1, as someone who knew what it takes to help the team grow and become something. After being promised a 100-race place, Szafneur was chucked out when all of a sudden the board decided to expedite the timeline.
Nick Fry, a former McLaren and Ferrari man, was part of Alpine but left the team disgruntled at the nature of operations in place. Quite a few names here are the ones who have achieved something in F1 and in motorsports in general. Neither, however, were facilitated in a manner that they could be positive reinforcement for the team. And that's the one thing that Audi needs to understand.
It has to put the right people in the right place, and then the next part is facilitation. Audi has hired some impressive talent in Jonathan Wheatley and Mattia Binotto. At the same time, it had hired a talent in Andreas Seidl, but it does appear that he wasn't facilitated like he should have been. For the next couple of years, the brand needs to let Binotto and Wheatley create a strong foundation before it can start achieving big things in the sport.
