Volkswagen brands Audi and Porsche’s F1 future might be announced as early as November; Red Bull and McLaren sees interests

The Volkswagen group’s brands Audi and Porsche’s joining of F1 in 2026 may be announced in November. Top teams interested to work.

For many months now, rumours of Volkswagen’s entry into F1 from 2026 have been making the rounds. November 2021 may see a meeting called by the supervisory board of Volkswagen, which is slated to discuss its F1 ambitions, among other topics.

Insiders believe that the individuals responsible for their respective departments will get a green light to start preparing for their 2026 entrance into the ‘pinnacle of motorsport’.

Things have been set in motion at VW. Volkswagen’s simulation games hint that Porsche will partner with Red Bull while Audi will collaborate with McLaren.

For both its brands, Volkswagen is looking to collaborate with Red Bull Powertrains to manufacture their engines for 2026, among other things. The engines will comply with the new regulations set for 2026, i.e., the Motor Generator Unit-Heat or the MGU-H will be done away with.

Also read: Red Bull boss Christian Horner believes reliability issues may play deciding factor in title bids for both Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton

The MGU-H is used to convert the heat from the exhaust into energy and fire the turbo. The new engine should depend more on the MGU-Kinetic, which recovers braking energy and contributes almost 50 per cent of the power. 

The new regulations hope to make the engine cheaper and more sustainable as F1 aims to power the engines with synthetic fuels instead of fossil fuels.

Plans in motion

One thing is sure:  Red Bull and Volkswagen have been preparing for this move for a time coming. Red Bull poached Ben Hodgkins from Mercedes. The Brit will act as the new engine manager for the Milton-Keynes-based team.

Hodgkinson is now negotiating with Mercedes to allow the move to Red Bull before 2023 as his current contract does not allow him to do so.

Helmut Marko of Red Bull shone some light on their position in all of this; “First of all, we want to make sure that we can stand on our own two feet with our ambitious project.”

However, Marko did not hesitate to talk about the involvement of Volkswagen in their endeavours. “When partners join us, they are of course welcome.”

Even Audi hired former BMW engineer Adam Baker in September to work on their engine with McLaren. Having been part of BMW, McLaren’s team boss Andreas Seidl has good personal relations with Baker and will look to work closely with him and Audi.