The arrival of Ferrari’s ADUO-2 engine specification on the SF-26 for the Italian Grand Prix was, at least on paper, an important opportunity to reduce the gap to its main rivals, particularly Red Bull and Mercedes on the power-unit side. Ferrari hoped the development would improve the competitiveness of both the 067/6 power unit and the SF-26, and expectations surrounding the upgrade were significant. In reality, however, it did not deliver the performance step the Maranello team had hoped for.
Judging by the drivers’ comments and Ferrari’s results in the subsequent races, the long-awaited engine upgrade was unable to make a decisive difference to the car’s performance. Its overall impact proved smaller than expected and was not enough to close Ferrari’s remaining deficit to its rivals, despite the months of development and refinement required to approve a specification that, on paper, was supposed to recover some of the missing power.
No illusions over Ferrari’s ADUO-2 upgrade
The homologation of Ferrari’s fourth power unit of the 2026 season, which nevertheless performed its intended role as effectively as possible, was never supposed to create unrealistic expectations among supporters, despite some of the narrative surrounding the upgrade.
Inside the factory there had only been cautious optimism about the work completed. The development was not accompanied by support from Shell in the form of a new fuel specification for the evolved 067/6, and Ferrari was fully aware that the new engine specification would not provide the 10-horsepower increase suggested by some reports. Instead, the maximum expected gain was approximately five horsepower.
It was therefore intended as a small step towards Ferrari’s rivals rather than a fundamental transformation. The engine retained the same basic architecture as the specification introduced at the beginning of the season, with the broader development picture also forming part of Ferrari’s ongoing SF-26 technical programme.
As previously reported, the 067/6 ADUO-2 actually uses a turbocharger of the same dimensions as the one fitted at the start of the championship. Although several details were revised to optimise its operation, with only limited influence on the Italian power unit’s performance, Ferrari did not introduce the larger-diameter turbocharger that had been suggested elsewhere.
Why Ferrari stepped back from the new SF-26 turbo
Those rumours were not entirely without foundation. Ferrari’s engine department had carried out extensive work with the aim of introducing a larger turbine on the car, both through development studies and dyno testing that began only a few races into the 2026 season.
The objective was to improve the SF-26’s performance after Ferrari had also lost, as a result of FIA directives, the initial advantage associated with its smaller turbine. However, before the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, Ferrari decided to take a step back from the project.
The engineers working under Enrico Gualtieri conducted lengthy dyno tests before ultimately abandoning the plan to equip the ADUO-2 engine with the new turbo assembly because the results from the indoor testing were not sufficiently encouraging.
According to information obtained from sources close to Ferrari, the new component did not achieve the reliability targets required for approval. The team therefore decided to postpone its introduction until the 2027 season rather than risk bringing the solution to the track prematurely.
Ferrari shifts turbo development towards 2027
The decision left Ferrari focusing on extracting the maximum possible performance from the hardware already available during the closing part of the 2026 championship. With the constraints and technical difficulties surrounding the current package, the objective became one of refining the existing components rather than introducing the larger turbo before it had reached the required reliability level.
The episode also helps explain why the ADUO-2 specification ultimately produced a relatively modest improvement despite the extensive work carried out behind the scenes. Ferrari had investigated a more substantial turbo development, but the component that could have represented the bigger technical change did not progress beyond the testing phase.
For the remainder of 2026, Ferrari must therefore continue trying to optimise the current 067/6 package while development of the more ambitious turbo solution moves towards 2027. The power-unit picture remains particularly important as Ferrari attempts to reduce its deficit to the strongest engines on the grid, with recorded straight-line performance also available through the F1 Top Speed Comparison.
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