Enlarge (credit: Audi)

In August of last year, we were somewhat shocked when Audi confirmed that it would enter Formula 1 in 2026 . Rumors had swirled for many years that Volkswagen Group was considering entering the sport with one or more of its brands, even as Audi and then Porsche racked up win after win in other categories. But those rumors never seemed to go anywhere, earning a kind of vaporware status similar to the infamous Duke Nukem Forever .

That game did eventually see the light of day, though, and so too will Audi's F1 ambitions when it takes over the Sauber team as F1 ushers in a new set of technical regulations. We recently spoke with Oliver Hoffmann, Audi's board member for technical development, who told us more about the company's F1 plans and how entering that sport should help some of its road cars.

Audi will be new to F1 when it joins the sport in three years, but it's certainly not new to motorsport. In the 1980s, it made a name for itself—and its "quattro" all-wheel drive technology—in the World Rally Championship. More recently, it dominated endurance racing for almost two decades , winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans 13 times between 2000 and 2016, plus two World Endurance Championships and nine American Le Mans Series championships. While doing so, it proved the value of new technology that transferred to its road cars—direct injection gasoline engines, direct injection turbo diesel engines, hybrid powertrains, and laser beam headlights, to name just a few.

Enlarge / This is the rear of the Red Bull RB19. I can't find a good photo of it with the DRS flap open, but the bit that says Oracle drops down flat, reducing the amount of drag the wing causes and increasing the car's top speed. (credit: Bryn Lennon - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Formula 1 held its annual street race in Azerbaijan this past weekend. With its very high-speed track, the city of Baku has seen some rather exciting racing. But that was not the case this year, which proved more soporific than Ambien. But at least one other race was truly entertaining this weekend, as the World Endurance Championship visited Belgium. Watching the two makes me think it's time for F1 to drop a couple of the driver assists.

Part 1: The case for banning DRS

F1's problem this year is one it often suffers from. One team has designed a better car than anyone else, and assuming that team—Red Bull Racing—stays reliable, it's almost certain to win both the drivers' and constructors' championships. It's not Red Bull's fault it did a much better job than anyone else this year, but its advantage is magnified by a techno-crutch that was added to the sport some years ago to try to increase overtaking.

It's called DRS (drag reduction system), and it was introduced in 2011 to address the problem of one F1 car not being able to follow another closely enough through a corner that it could then build up the necessary speed to overtake.

Enlarge / F1 cars use engines with thermal efficiencies that even a Prius could only dream about. They are not the cause of the sport's carbon footprint. (credit: Dan Istitene - Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images)

Formula 1 might be a sport, but it's also a $2.6 billion business with shareholders, and like pretty much every other multibillion-dollar business with shareholders, that means it's under increasing scrutiny regarding the amount of carbon emissions it's responsible for. Currently, that's about 250,000 tons a year, but the sport says it wants to reduce that to net zero by 2030. I spoke with F1's chief sustainability to learn more about how it's doing that, and you may be surprised to learn that race cars have very little to do with it.

While F1's carbon footprint is just a fraction of other global sporting events like the Olympics or World Cup, it's a more visible target, considering it involves cars driving around a track burning gasoline. But focusing only on the cars is a mistake.

Forget the cars

For one thing, since the introduction of hybrid powertrains in 2014, F1 cars have become extremely efficient. There are a pair of hybrid systems —one that captures energy under braking and another that captures energy from exhaust gases—and the 1.6 L V6s burn their gasoline more efficiently than any other internal combustion engine ever made, approaching or perhaps even passing 50 percent now .

Enlarge / A Formula 2 car on track in Bahrain. The cars are less powerful than an F1 machine, but still tricky to drive. (credit: Joe Portlock - Formula 1/Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images)

The 2023 Formula 1 season springs into life this weekend at the Bahrain Grand Prix, the first race of the year. Three days of preseason testing held last week suggest that Red Bull Racing still has the car to beat, although there is the tantalizing prospect of Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin having possibly found a lot of speed in the off-season.

But today's interesting news actually comes from the lower formulae, F2 and F3, where young drivers cut their teeth. Today, those series announced that they are moving to sustainable fuels starting this season.

As we've previously detailed, F1 is moving to carbon-neutral gasoline in 2026 , but as single-make formulae with a single fuel supplier (in this case Aramco), it's possible for F2 and F3 to try something even bolder.

Enlarge / The Ford DFV is the most successful F1 engine of all time. Ford is returning to the sport as an engine builder in 2026. Note the suspension elements mounted on the engine, which is a fully stressed part of the chassis—a big revolution in F1 car design. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Formula 1 just can't seem to keep American car companies away. Last month, we were stunned by the news that Cadillac wants to enter F1 with the Andretti team , which is seeking an entry into the sport. While that bid remains in doubt , here's one that isn't: Today, the Ford Motor Company revealed it will be back in F1 starting in 2026, when the new engine rules come into effect .

"This is the start of a thrilling new chapter in Ford's motorsports story that began when my great-grandfather won a race that helped launch our company," said Bill Ford, executive chair of Ford. "Ford is returning to the pinnacle of the sport, bringing Ford’s long tradition of innovation, sustainability, and electrification to one of the world’s most visible stages.”

Ford's first foray into F1 began in 1967 when Colin Chapman, the head of Lotus, persuaded Ford to pay for the development of a new racing engine that would be a stressed part of the F1 chassis. (In other words, it was a structural element of the car rather than being mounted in a cradle or subframe.) After being initially rebuffed, Chapman convinced Walter Hayes, the head of Ford UK's PR, to help him lobby the suits, and the result was a development budget of £100,000—about $1.7 million today—given to Cosworth to create the engine.

Enlarge (credit: Cadillac)

The world of Formula 1 got a shock on Thursday morning when General Motors announced it has plans to enter the championship. GM wants to go F1 racing with its Cadillac brand, partnering with a new Andretti Global team, assuming the sport's organizing body accepts the entry.

F1 has been fixed at 10 teams since Haas joined the sport in 2016. Since then, the series has introduced a new budget cap that has reined in some of the crazier budgets and made the prospect of operating an F1 team much less of a financial black hole. The exact amount of the cost cap is adjusted depending on how many races are planned for a year— for 2023, that should be $138.6 million —and even finishing in 10th place earns a team enough money to cover about 70 percent of those costs.

As a result, the sport is now a much more attractive proposition for new entrants than it was the last time we gained new teams in 2010, none of which survived. But there's a snag: You can't just turn up at the start of a season with a couple of cars and expect to go racing. The sport's organizing body, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA), requires that any new team "buy in" to the franchise with a $200 million "non-dilution fee" meant to ensure a new competitor doesn't cost the existing 10 teams any of their income.

Enlarge / In addition to getting faster over the years, F1 cars have also gotten far more efficient. And that's only going to increase in the coming years. (credit: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)

When Formula 1 cars take to the track for the first time in 2026 , they'll do so powered by carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, part of the sport's "net zero by 2030" plan. It's a laudable goal, but, I confess, one I've sometimes questioned. After all, most of the carbon emitted during the course of an F1 weekend comes from the same sources as any other popular sport— the teams and fans traveling to and from the event. But after speaking with Pat Symonds, Formula 1's chief technical officer, I may have been missing the forest for the trees.

"In essence, yes, you're quite right. The total carbon footprint of the sport—of scope 1, 2—is just over a quarter million tonnes of CO ₂ equivalent, and the cars on the circuit represent 0.7 percent of that," Symonds explained to me. "So yes, your premise is true. But we try and take a much wider view. And what I think we have in developing a sustainable fuel and putting it in our race cars is an enormous multiplier effect. The 2 billion vehicles that are out there could use this fuel, and then the 400,000 people driving to [the US Grand Prix] isn't a problem," he said.

Formula 1 has changed quite a bit in the years since Liberty Media bought it at the end of 2016 with bigger ideas than simply sucking revenue out. Instead of pretending the Internet never happened, you can now watch races via F1's own streaming service, a service that has markedly improved over the past couple of years. In the US, a move to ESPN saw the sport go commercial-free during the actual races. And, of course, there's the whole Drive to Survive phenomena, which has boosted audiences worldwide—but particularly in North America, which next year will host grands prix in Austin, Texas; Miami; and Las Vegas.

Enlarge / One of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team's Actros Gigaspace trucks, seen here at this year's Hungarian Grand Prix, when it first tried the drop-in renewable biofuel instead of conventional diesel. (credit: Steve Etherington/Mercedes-AMG F1)

A switch from diesel to biofuel significantly reduced the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team's freight carbon emissions in a new test. The team made the switch for the final three European races of this season, using locally sourced hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO)—made from food waste like fryer oil—to run 16 heavy trucks as they hauled the team between grand prix in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.

Over a distance of 870 miles (1,400 km), it says the use of HVO resulted in less carbon emissions—44,091 kg less to be specific, which is a decrease of 89 percent compared to normal fossil fuel diesel.

The race cars are a rounding error

A push for greater fuel efficiency in Formula 1 has resulted in some fairly remarkable engineering. A current F1 powertrain is as complex as the sport has ever seen, combining comparatively tiny but extraordinarily efficient V6 gasoline engines with hybrid systems that recover energy under braking and from the turbocharger spinning .

Enlarge / In a subtle troll at its rival, Audi says this will be the first F1 engine built in Germany for more than a decade. (credit: Audi)

Audi will race in Formula 1 in 2026 with engines built at its Audi Sport factory in Neustadt, Germany. After years of rumors, Friday's announcement was not entirely unexpected; in May then-volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess confirmed it would enter the sport in four years when the next set of engine regulations come into effect.

VW Group will actually fund two F1 programs, one with Audi and second with Porsche, which is in the process of acquiring a 50-percent stake in Red Bull Technologies. The Porsche announcement was supposed to take place at Red Bull's home race in Austria in July, but the sport only ratified the 2026 engine rules in mid-August.

That deal may still need some i's dotted and t's crossed , but with the new rules now confirmed, Audi has taken the opportunity of this week's Belgian Grand Prix to reveal its show car, and to formally launch its F1 effort.