Growing Pains: The Anatomy of Audi’s Rocky F1 Start

As I walked through the Formula 1 wing of Audi Sport’s state-of-the-art building in Neuburg, Germany, I was led into a room full of machines straight out of Dexter’s Laboratory. The engineer in charge of that particular area explained that the robotic needle next to him could, with just a light tap, inspect any car part for internal cracks thousands of times thinner than a human hair. He pointed at a poster that, according to him, backed up everything he’d said. The poster was in German.

I said, “So this is how a sport that started with cars being wrenched in barns and raced by chainsmokers got so expensive, huh?” He didn’t laugh. To him, in his little corner of a complex that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to …