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Porsche and Audi are both going to enter Formula 1 in 2026
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 2 May, 2022 - 12:25 · 1 minute
Rumors that Volkswagen Group is poised to enter Formula 1 have circulated for years. Every few months, often in a European car magazine, we'll read about an unnamed VW Group board member who says it's happening, then it all goes quiet for a few more months. But now it's really for real, says VW Group CEO Herbert Diess, as the 2026 rule change offers the perfect opportunity.
For a while, VW Group moving to F1 barely even made sense. The two high-technology, high-engineering brands in the group—Porsche and Audi—were both already spending F1-sized budgets to compete against each other in sportscar racing. That's a far more road-relevant form of motorsport, and one where both companies proved new technology that's now commonplace in their road cars.
But then Dieselgate happened, and Audi's diesel-powered hybrid Le Mans conquerer had to go . A year later, Porsche's even faster hybrid program was shuttered, having won everything there was to win . Across the group, brands scaled back their motorsports programs, focusing on electric ones like Formula E and VW's Pikes Peak champion .