Audi F1 × adidas Sampa Soul: São Paulo in Every Stitch
A Formula 1 collection can do more than put a team logo on a jersey. With Sampa Soul, Audi Revolut F1 Team and adidas give São Paulo a place in the visual language of race week—through its pavements, colours and everyday style.
By Patrice Meignan
São Paulo does not need Formula 1 to make itself memorable. The city already has its own rhythm, scale and visual grammar. The interesting question for a team arriving in the championship is whether it can take part in that identity without flattening it into a souvenir. The new Audi F1 x adidas Sampa Soul collection makes a considered attempt: it starts with a pattern underfoot and carries it from the street to the paddock.
São Paulo, translated through its pavement
The collection’s central reference is the Piso Paulista: the geometric paving pattern that appears across São Paulo’s sidewalks and public spaces. Rather than simply printing a flag or a skyline, adidas translates that everyday city texture into an abstract repeat across key pieces, including the driver jersey and track top. It is a small but meaningful choice. A pavement belongs to daily life; it is encountered by residents long before it becomes a design reference.
The main palette is forest green, lifted by metallic-gold details on the adidas stripes, Audi rings and team marks. Fine blue and yellow lines around the jersey’s cuffs and neckline nod to Brazil’s flag. Select pieces add embossed surfaces inspired by crochet and embroidery, bringing a tactile note to a collection that could otherwise have remained a set of graphics on standard fanwear.
From the race suit to the café
The campaign places Gabriel Bortoleto and Nico Hülkenberg alongside Brazilian actor André Lamoglia in a nostalgic 1970s São Paulo café. That setting matters. It moves the clothes away from the usual pit-lane shorthand and lets them read as part of a wider city wardrobe—something that can travel from a Grand Prix weekend into ordinary life.
That is the broader opportunity for modern F1 teamwear. A global team competes on a travelling calendar, but each home race offers a chance to make a local connection with more substance than a one-off colour change. For Audi, whose factory team is making its first Formula 1 season in 2026, São Paulo becomes one of the first places where its identity can meet a specific community and its visual culture.
Fanwear with a point of view
The capsule extends beyond the driver jersey. It includes jackets, track tops, polos, T-shirts, shorts, caps, footwear and accessories, giving fans several ways into the same design story. The strongest pieces are those where the local reference is built into the material or pattern, rather than added as a race-week label. The embossed knit and the measured use of gold are good examples: they make the collection feel considered without turning it into costume.
There is a useful distinction here between licensed merchandise and place-specific design. The first asks fans to display allegiance. The second gives them a reason to wear the object even when the race is over. Sampa Soul is at its best when it manages both: recognisable as Audi F1, yet clearly shaped by São Paulo rather than by a generic motorsport template.
Why Sampa Soul works
Its most persuasive idea is also its simplest: look closely at the host city before designing for it. The Piso Paulista pattern is not an abstract nod to “Brazilian energy”; it comes from a real urban surface. The green-and-gold palette, the restrained flag-colour accents and the campaign’s café setting build around that starting point without overwhelming it.
The collection launched on 23 October ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos on 8 November 2026. The timing gives the release the momentum of race week, but the design has a life beyond the event. That is the test of a successful fashion-and-cars collaboration: can it carry the feeling of a place after the transporters have left? Sampa Soul has a credible answer—one pattern, one palette and a city that remains visible in every stitch.
Explore: Audi Revolut F1 Team’s Sampa Soul collection.
