Now for the encore

Audi has conquered virtually every type of motorsport you can name but none is trickier than Formula 1. CHARLIE MARTIN discovers how it plans to rise to the very top

- CHARLIE MARTIN

One hundred and fifteen days, nine hours, 15 minutes and 30 seconds. On every wall, screen and set of lips at Audi's new Formula 1 base in southern Germany is a reminder of just how little time remains until the Four Rings grace a grand prix for the first time in 87 years.

But as the team hurtles towards that milestone, it faces a great many questions that remain unanswered. Not only has Audi made the decision to enter the fastest-moving motorsport category in a season in which its ruleset is being totally overhauled, but it has also decided to go it completely alone. Aside from purchasing long-established backmarker team Sauber, which will build the team's chassis, each and every element of the new team is being developed from the ground up. And to top it all off, Audi wants to fight for a championship within just four years.

Crucially, Audi has opted to build its own power unit, no doubt discontented by the optics of becoming a client - a subordinate - to Mercedes-AMG, Honda, Ferrari or Red Bull-Ford. This, chief operations officer Christian Foyer admits, puts the team “six years behind” competition that includes another newcomer, Cadillac, which will initially run Ferrari power units.

Nonetheless, says Foyer as he walks us down the corridors of the F1 factory at Audi’s motorsport competence centre in Neuburg an der Donau. It’s an incognito building; a brutal amalgam of blackened steel tucked around the back of an equally brutal-looking test track.