Two years ago, when Audi announced its plans to enter Formula 1 in 2026, Nico Hulkenberg might not have occured to many as one of its potential drivers.
His career as a full-time F1 driver ended three years earlier, eclipsed by new team mate Daniel Ricciardo at Renault. One too many opportunities had slipped through his fingers to score a breakthrough podium, which eludes him still.
But if anyone still had faith in the potential of a driver who arrived in F1 to huge fanfare 14 years ago, it was surely Andreas Seidl. Now CEO of Sauber Group, which will become Audi’s F1 team after next season, he appointed Hulkenberg when he was running Porsche’s World Endurance Championship team in 2015. Hulkenberg seized the chance and scored what remains his most recent victory to date in the Le Mans 24 Hours with team mates Nick Tandy and Earl Bamber.
That moment of glory aside, the past decade and a half has been astonishingly short of success for a driver who arrived in F1 with Hulkenberg’s CV. Championship wins in Formula BMW Germany, A1 Grand Prix, Formula 3 Euro Series plus a rookie title win in GP2 (now Formula 2) marked him out as the next German star who would pick up where Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel left off.
Few would have expected Hulkenberg to end up equalling Andrea de Cesaris’s record for starting 208 grands prix without ever winning one, as he did last weekend. But today’s announcement gives the 36-year-old cause to believe he will put that right before he hangs up his helmet. With more drivers racing into their forties, that could still be many years away.
Hulkenberg will return to Sauber next year – where he spent a single, largely unsuccessful season in 2013 – before its rebranding as Audi. “It‘s a big project with high ambitions and a huge challenge,” said Hulkenberg, who said his discussions with Seidl and Audi’s general representative for Formula 1 Oliver Hoffmann as “very trustful, characterised by a lot of appreciation and mutual understanding regarding the common goals.”
His move means the grid for next season is already halfway towards being set. But there are still major decisions to be made in the wake of Lewis Hamilton’s surprise off-season announcement of his move to Ferrari next year.
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