While the spotlight inside the Audi Brand Experience Center in Munich shone on the R26 Concept and the formal unveiling of Audi’s Formula 1 program, the scene outside told a critically important part of the Audi motorsport story. There, on a crisp Bavarian evening, Audi orchestrated a remarkable gathering: a family reunion of machines and drivers who shaped the brand’s motorsport legacy long before the company decided to enter Formula 1. This parade of legends reunited for the moment Audi chose to celebrate its next great motorsport chapter.
Before digging into the cars and the legends, it’s also worth mentioning that one of the curated videos added to the ooooIYKYK video archive today is the personal experience of Schmee150. Schmee takes you behind the scenes, from dinner at the secretive Audi Tradition Ingolstadt warehouse to the reveal of the RB26 concept. Find it HERE.
The lineup read like the syllabus of Audi racing history. Michèle Mouton and Fabrizia Pons arrived in the Audi Sport quattro Rallye S1, a car in which they cemented their place as one of the most iconic duos in rallying. This iconic duo isn’t often seen together at Audi events these days, so the image of the two standing together beside the S1 was certainly a special treat.
Nearby, Frank Biela settled into the cockpit of the Auto Union Type C, a machine whose roots reach back to the 1930s and the earliest chapters of the four rings. This Grand Prix Silver Arrow design by Ferdinand Porsche is effectively a pre-war equivalent to F1, showing just how deep the brand’s competition DNA runs.
Endurance legend and nine-time Le Mans champion, Tom Kristensen stood beside arrived in an Audi R8 LMP, the prototype that defined an era of dominance at Circuit de la Sarthe and solidly set in motion the Great Dane’s record-run of Le Mans victories.
Nico Hülkenberg, one of the first drivers of Audi’s future Formula One team, stepped out of an Audi Sport quattro Rallye S1. This marked the passing of the torch: a driver preparing for Audi’s next era emerging from the box-flared coupé that defined one of its most mythical early ones.
Then came more modern machines. Dindo Capello and Allan McNish, legends of Audi’s hybrid endurance era, appeared with the Audi S1 e-tron Hoonitron. Dindo has been a regular in exhibition driving of the electric gymkhana car — famously designed for Ken Block — representing another thread in Audi’s increasingly electrified motorsport chapters.
A few steps away, young F1 driver Gabriel Bortoleto paired with the Audi RS Q e-tron, the hybrid-electric racer that intelligently reused Formula E power units and the RS 5 DTM’s turbocharged engine as range extender in order to win the Dakar Rally.
Hans-Joachim Stuck brought an iconic fan favorite, the Audi 90 quattro IMSA GTO with its ultra-wide bodywork and unmissable stance harkening the American GT battles of that era.
Rounding out the gathering, rally legends Stig Blomqvist and Harald Demuth reunited with the Audi quattro Rallye A2 — another cornerstone of the Group B age and a symbol of Audi’s impact on rallying.
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Taken all together, the gathering outside the venue is meant as a reminder of Audi’s long history of racing dominance. As Audi prepares to enter the world’s most watched motorsport series, the “Audi One” event served as a bridge into the four rings’ greatest challenge yet.
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