While we’re just days away from the Mexican Grand Prix this coming weekend, Audi is already making preparations for the Brazilian Grand Prix. The rollout began with a full line of adidas merch as part of a collection announced last week, and now we’re seeing plans for coordinated elements like racing suit, helmet and even a special race livery for the Audi Revolut F1 R26 racecar.
This isn’t the first time Audi has done merch drops or special livery, suit and helmet tie-ins this season. The process began in Miami with an adidas apparel collection that coordinated with subtle colorful numbers on the R26 team cars and similarly tweaked racing suits. In Monaco, the red elements on the cars and team clothing swapped for yellow – a favored color for racing legend Tazio Nuvolari for whom the Audi Nuvolari racecar was named. Several stand-alone merch items came from adidas in the meantime, though it was Singapore where we saw perhaps the biggest and most extreme implementation including a full line of adidas apparel, drastically different racing suits and a completely different color way on the R26.
Now comes Brazil. While it’ll be the second time Brazilian driver Gabriel Bortoleto competes as an F1 driver in his home race, it will be the first time he does so as a driver for Audi. That seems to be the focus because the teaser section on AudiF1.com seems to focus on reveals beginning in five days from now – first a special driver’s racing suit, then a race-specific helmet for Gabi six days from today, and a full-blown race livery for the R26 in one week.
Audi has included another teaser and this one is even less specific than before. Rather than the peel-away virtual shell of last time, this time shows a dot design that really gives us nothing to work with beyond colors. The teaser uses the same dark green hue and muted gold of the adidas gear, which means it’ll probably take cues from those pieces including the Piso Paulista pattern said to be inspired by São Paulo’s streets.
Watch this space for more news as it happens, and we may even take the time to take a guess at what we can expect. Now that Audi has done the special livery thing a few times, we’re beginning to see how they like to adjust the flavor of the R26. That might give us crucial clues this teaser lacks.
In the meantime, we’ve attached a few screenshots of the teaser below, though you can sign up for updates and play along while entering for an adidas Sampa Soul collection of gear over on AudiF1.com.
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