Nico Hulkenberg was left counting another near-miss in Austin as Audi’s frustrating habit of finishing just outside the points continued at the United States Grand Prix, with a botched getaway making an already difficult afternoon even harder.
The German took the chequered flag in 11th at the Circuit of The Americas, his third such result in the last four Grands Prix.
Team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto finished 13th after starting from the back, leaving Audi empty-handed despite another weekend in which the team showed enough pace to entertain hopes of a points haul.
The result underlined a recurring problem for the Hinwil-based outfit: progress in performance has not yet translated into consistent rewards on Sundays.
Anti-stall compounds Hulkenberg’s frustration
Hulkenberg began the race from 11th on the grid, but his chances of breaking into the top ten suffered an immediate setback when his car unexpectedly dropped into anti-stall at the start.
“You can’t call that a bad start, it went into anti-stall so yeah, that’s more than a bad start,” the German said afterwards.
The behaviour caught him by surprise, particularly because the system did not intervene when he expected it to. With the cause still unclear immediately after the race, Hulkenberg was left waiting for the team to investigate what had gone wrong.
“A strange one as normally the anti-stall kicks in instantly, and I did a few metres and then it kicked in. Sounded and felt a bit odd, but obviously don’t know what happened, [I'm] fresh out of the car so I need to go back and see what happened and why.
“But of course, it didn’t help our cause for the race.”
Audi has endured reliability headaches during its first season running its own power unit, with limited opportunities to gather data compared with manufacturers supplying multiple teams.
Hulkenberg failed to start two of the opening four races, although the more recent record has improved, with Silverstone his last retirement.
Starts, however, remain a weakness. Losing ground off the line has repeatedly left both drivers with work to do, and Austin offered another reminder of how quickly that can compromise a points challenge.
Hulkenberg felt there was little else he could realistically have achieved after the initial setback.
“You saw again today we were quite close pace-wise with Pierre [Gasly] and with Liam [Lawson], and obviously we came from behind after that start but not sure we could have done a whole lot more from there,” the F1 veteran added.
“It would have all [been] dependent on how with a good start [where] we would have come out, we can only speculate but it is what it is now.”
Bortoleto makes the best of a difficult assignment
Bortoleto faced a steep uphill battle before the lights even went out. Power unit component changes brought a raft of penalties, sending the Brazilian to the rear of the field and leaving him with little margin for error.
He nevertheless found some enjoyment in working his way through traffic, even if the recovery ultimately delivered only 13th place.
“We did a good race, overtook some cars, kept it clean at the same time you know, no damage. I had a bit of fun overtaking people and being out there, trying my best, putting in some good [racing]. Obviously, it is difficult to recover everything starting from the back,” the Brazilian said.
Like Hulkenberg, Bortoleto has repeatedly found himself just outside the points, with five 11th-place finishes already on his 2026 record.
Audi remains eighth in the Constructors’ Championship, seven points behind Haas in the battle for seventh.
The Hinwil squad’s upgrades, introduced in Baku, have helped bring the team into the midfield fight, but the points have been scarce: Hulkenberg’s eighth place in Singapore remains its only scoring result across the last four Grands Prix.
There are encouraging foundations nonetheless. The car has made progress, the driver pairing is established, and the team has navigated disruption following Jonathan Wheatley’s departure as team principal.
For now, though, Audi must turn that underlying promise into results. In Austin, another handful of tenths — and a cleaner start — might have made all the difference.
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