Five months of speculation, since a decision was taken to sign Nico Hulkenberg for 2025 and beyond, will finally come to an end next week.
Valtteri Bottas is expected to be confirmed as a Stake F1 driver for next season, RacingNews365 understands.
Bit of a nothingburger, but not unexpected. Whoever drives the car next year is essentially pointless as it will be another year of making up the numbers while Audi is waiting in the wings. They just want someone stable and safe who isn’t going to waste money on unnecessary crashes, so Bottas for a year makes sense. Will be much more interesting to see who gets the nod for 2026.
Whoever drives the car next year is essentially pointless
I don’t think so. For a rookie, it could be a year of valuable f1 experience which would mean they would be better prepared for the first proper year of audi in 2026
They must not value any available rookie highly enough. I assume they value safe hands more, and will go for another established driver even for 2026. Not saying it’s the best approach but I can see the reasoning.
Got to say I don’t see their logic. They got to build a successful team in the long term and changing drivers repeatedly does not aid that. All the youngsters who were successful in their first F2 season are good/great in F1 as well(Russell, leclerc, piastri, Norris, tsunoda) so neither pourchaire nor bortoleto are poor choices and I would argue are a better choice than bottas in the long term.
It all depends on how competitive they think they’ll be right off the bat. If they think they’ll be a contender right in 26 I’d agree with you, but the longer the timeframe the more sense “safe pair of hands” would make, to me at least.
F to Bortoleto and Colapinto
