A Formula One team has had the worst start possible to pre season testing as their car has broken down for the second time.
With the 2026 Formula One season rapidly approaching, teams from across the grid have started testing their cars ahead of the opening race in Melbourne on March 8.
Ahead of the two annual televised testing weekends in Bahrain in February, teams have been given an additionally testing period behind closed doors at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya across five days, starting on January 26 and ending on January 30.
However, as expected, not all of the details of these testing sessions have remained behind closed doors, with fans already getting a rough idea on which teams they can expect to perform the best in the upcoming season.
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But for one team, the testing in Barcelona has been a complete disaster, as they suffered yet another stoppage on the third day.
Following the 2025 season, Kick Sauber have been replaced by Audi, with the iconic German car manufacturers finally joining the Formula One grid for the foreseeable future.
Of course, Audi's arrival has brought around a lot of interest on how they will perform in their debut season, and so far it's not looking good.
Audi arrived on track on Monday for their first ever testing session, only for it to come to a sudden and early end after only 27 laps due to a technical issue which caused a red flag and cut Gabriel Bortoleto's session short.
“We were doing a pretty decent job in the morning, putting some labs onboard, testing some things, we were going in the right direction,” Bortoleto said.
“But as we all expect, this is a shakedown and everything can happen, and we expect to find issues here and there in the car. And we found a couple of problems that unfortunately put us out of the day."
After missing most of the opening day of testing, Audi decided to sit out on Tuesday due to the poor weather conditions, before returning to the Barcelona track on Wednesday.
But, once again, they faced issues early in the day when Nico Hulkenberg ground to a halt between Turn 9 and 10.
Although it hasn't been officially confirmed, it's been reported that the car was forced to stop due to a hydraulic problem.
Thankfully, Audi were able to later get back on track to complete more laps before taking part in their third and final day of Barcelona testing later this week.
Topics: Motorsport, Formula 1
Ben McCrum