Monza was always going to bite. The Audi Revolut F1 Team left the Italian Grand Prix just outside the points — Gabriel Bortoleto 11th, Nico Hülkenberg 12th — after both cars lost places on the long run to Turn 1 and spent Sunday clawing back. Andrea Kimi Antonelli won for Mercedes, ahead of George Russell and Max Verstappen.
Starts that made Sunday hard
Bortoleto lined up 10th after Antonelli’s grid penalty. Hülkenberg started 12th. On a circuit that already punishes a midfield car on the straights, those opening meters mattered. Once places disappeared into the first chicane, the rest of the 53 laps turned into a recovery job against a packed midfield — Racing Bulls especially strong in a straight line, per Bortoleto.
Racing director Allan McNish put it plainly: Monza was one of the tougher layouts for the R26 package. Lose ground early, and you’re fighting forward all afternoon. Strategy and stops still looked sharp — McNish flagged the Virtual Safety Car timing for Hülkenberg and said the crew delivered the race’s fastest pit stop.
P11 and P12 — streak over
Bortoleto finished 11th, 65.187 seconds behind the winner. Hülkenberg was 12th, another second back. Neither scored. That ends Audi’s run of four straight Grands Prix with at least one driver in the points — Hülkenberg’s ninth in Hungary and eighth at Zandvoort were the recent highs.
Hülkenberg: “We knew this was always going to be one of the more difficult weekends for us given the characteristics of the circuit, so considering that, it wasn’t a bad day… We extracted what we could from the package today.”
Bortoleto: “I think I gave everything I had today. The start definitely didn’t make things easy… Still, the team gave me a car capable of fighting much closer to the points than we expected.”
McNish took the same line — solid execution on a weekend that was never handing out points: “The execution across the team was very good, and that’s something we can take with us as we head to Madrid.”
Constructors stay eighth — Madrid next
Audi stays eighth in the 2026 constructors’ championship on 16 points — five behind Haas, five ahead of Williams. In the drivers’ table, Bortoleto sits on 10 points, Hülkenberg on 6.
Next up: the Spanish Grand Prix, 11–13 September. First race at the new Madring circuit, and the last European round of the year. After a Temple of Speed weekend that asked the wrong questions of the R26, Madrid is the reset.
Sources: Audi Revolut F1 Team; team race notes via Pitpass; Formula 1 2026 calendar. Official race photography © AUDI AG / Audi Revolut F1 Team — editorial use.