The car you see here is not the Audi F1 car that will line up on the grid for the first race of the season in Australia next year. Advanced active aerodynamics will play a key role in the new 2026 regulations, and all 11 teams will keep their cards as close to their chests as possible until the first laps are run during pre-season testing; it's also missing the corporate sponsors. But that does not mean the Audi R26 Concept is not important, as it reveals for the first time why the German brand spent so much money on what it calls the "Audi F1 Project."
Audi's press release states that R26 is one of the "first expressions of the brand's new visual identity," and gives us a prime example of how this piece of unobtanium will filter down to road-legal cars. You've seen that silver (called Titanium) recently on the new Concept C sports car. The red color on the livery is all new, and it's called Audi red (the designer also referred to it as Lava red). While you can't give them points for whimsical naming, the color will feature on the springs of select cars to make them stand out from lesser Audis. How much do you want to bet the upcoming Audi RS6 will have red springs? It's not exactly groundbreaking marketing, but racing on Sunday and selling on Monday has been proven to be a smash hit with customers, and F1 has never been as big as it is right now.
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