Kick Sauber sit P9 in the 2026 constructors' championship after Miami, two points to their name and zero wins through the opening quarter of the season. For a team carrying the badge in the run-up to the Audi works era, that's not a number that screams progress. It's a number that says the regulation reset hasn't yet done what Hinwil hoped it would.
Miami didn't help. Gabriel Bortoleto came home P12 and a lap down, and Nico Hülkenberg retired from P19 — a weekend that produced exactly nothing on the board and exactly nothing to point to as a step forward. The two points the team is sitting on came from somewhere earlier in the calendar, and through four rounds, Bortoleto remains the only Sauber driver to find the scoring window. Hülkenberg, the most experienced driver in F1 history without the kind of championship campaign his résumé deserves, is still searching for his first point of 2026.
The gap below is thin and the gap above is the kind that gets papered over in a single chaotic Sunday, which is the only honest path back into the midfield conversation right now. The car hasn't given either driver a real window. The Audi project is the long game, but the short game is asking pointed questions.
What to watch next: whether Hülkenberg can finally get on the board, and whether Bortoleto can turn a P12 starting point into a points-paying finish when the next opening cracks.