Audi’s F1 drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto have shared their first thoughts after the German manufacturer’s car hit the track for the first time.<\/p>\n
The R26 took to the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya earlier this week as Audi performed an initial shakedown of the car.<\/p>\n
Teams are allowed to do a maximum of 200km of running with a car outside official sessions with current machinery, with Audi allocating their reserved time to the initial shakedown.<\/p>\n
It gave Audi an opportunity to check the car’s systems and assess its power unit, which has been built from scratch as part of a new regulation cycle.<\/p>\n
Audi enter the year after taking over Sauber, with Hulkenberg and Bortoleto forming its line-up.<\/p>\n
The duo were paired together last season at Sauber and enjoyed a healthy relationship – one that Audi hopes will continue this year.<\/p>\n
Both drivers took to social media on Friday after the test run to express their delight over how the day unfolded.<\/p>\n
See the posts below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audi’s F1 drivers Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto have shared their first thoughts after the German manufacturer’s car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":404666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,827,817,830,828,831,829,826,813,816,823,825,824,822,85],"class_list":["post-404665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motorsport","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=404665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/404665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/404666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=404665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=404665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=404665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}