Whitley: The track in China revealed Audi's weaknesses

      As in the first stage of the season in Melbourne, only one Audi driver started the Sunday race in Shanghai. In China, the team identified a problem with Gabriel Bortoleto's power unit on the starting grid and was forced to roll his car back to the pits.

      After the race, team principal Jonathan Wheatley spoke about how the Shanghai track revealed weaknesses in the engine related to reliability and drivability.

      "This result is very disappointing," admitted Jonathan Wheatley. "This is the second race in a row where only one of our cars has started. The team apologizes to Gabriel. We really need to focus on improving reliability now.

      The Chinese track has exposed our weaknesses in many areas. We still struggle with engine drivability, which caused several issues for Nico [Hülkenberg] on the exit of turn six during the race.

      I can say that I had a long conversation with Mattia [Binotto]. The analysis we conducted, and we are cautious about what we say publicly, shows that one of the areas we will focus on in the next development cycle is the power unit. We believe there is work to be done in this area."

      When asked if Audi is ready to supply its engines to customer teams to gain more information for analysis, Wheatley said: "I think we are still a long way from supporting customers.

      Let's be realistic. If you look at the distance that teams with Mercedes engines covered during winter testing, it is about four times more than ours. At the same time, we did not have reliability issues, and we covered a lot of kilometers."