Racing
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The FIA’s new ADUO mechanism is already shaping up as one of Formula 1’s biggest 2026 political battles, with manufacturers set to be judged on internal combustion engine performance alone and rivals warning that the first ruling could change the championship order rather than simply help strugglers catch up.
ADUO, the Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities system, was introduced as a recovery tool to avoid a repeat of 2014, when Mercedes’ early power unit advantage defined the first years of a new rules cycle. Under the FIA plan, manufacturers assessed to be 2% to 4% behind the best ICE receive one extra upgrade opportunity, while those more than 4% down get two. The concessions also include extra bench-testing and limited development flexibility, but unlike a balance-of-performance system in other categories, the leader is not slowed down.
The first judgment was meant to come after round six, originally expected after Miami, but the cancellations of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix have shifted that timetable. The first assessment is now expected around Monaco or early June, and that delay has become part of the fight because the FIA is reported to favor bringing the evaluation forward while Mercedes is understood to be against it.
That matters because ADUO is not based on the full power unit. It measures only the ICE, excluding battery efficiency, energy deployment and MGU-K-related performance. In practice, that means the benchmark engine may not be the one attached to the strongest overall package.
Mercedes is widely regarded as having the strongest engine overall, but the ICE-only wording has fueled speculation that Red Bull could emerge as the benchmark on that specific metric. If that happened, the implications would be much broader than a simple aid package for the backmarkers. It is considered highly unlikely, but not entirely impossible, that Mercedes itself could qualify for an upgrade if Red Bull set the reference in pure combustion-engine output.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff, speaking to media including Motorsport.com, said the system must stay true to its original purpose. “The principle of the ADUO was to allow teams that were on the back foot, in terms of the power unit, to catch up, but not to leapfrog,” Wolff said. He warned that “any decision may have a big impact on the championship” and added that “gamesmanship hasn't got any place here.”
Wolff made clear he believes the number of manufacturers that should qualify is small. “There's one engine manufacturer that has a problem and we need to help,” he said, adding that the others are “pretty much in the same ballpark.” Reporting around the debate has pointed to Honda as the manufacturer most widely seen as fitting that description.
Ferrari has become another flashpoint. Team principal Frederic Vasseur said in Shanghai that “the addition of the ADUO will be an opportunity for us to close the gap,” and Ferrari has indicated it sees a meaningful deficit to Mercedes. But rival teams argue Ferrari’s shortfall is influenced at least in part by its own design choices, including the use of a smaller turbo, raising the question of whether ADUO should reward a manufacturer for trade-offs it chose itself.
That is exactly the outcome Wolff says the FIA must avoid. He said Mercedes has “precise data from our own analytics” on engine performance and urged the governing body to act with “absolute precision, clarity, and transparency.” His concern is not only who gets help, but whether an ICE-only ruling creates room for sandbagging or for a team close to the front to gain development it was never meant to receive.
The first ADUO decision will therefore do more than identify which manufacturers are behind. It will establish the benchmark that shapes who gets extra development through the rest of 2026, and it could steer the direction of 2027 engine programs as well.