The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is always a special event for Formula 1 fans and, above all, for Ferrari and the Tifosi. For the Scuderia, its home race naturally brings an added desire to deliver the strongest possible result in front of its supporters. This weekend also carries the spirit and legacy of Michael Schumacher, 30 years after his first Monza victory in Ferrari colours in 1996. Emotion aside, however, Maranello is well aware that the 2026 Italian Grand Prix is unlikely to be an easy challenge.
The reason is clear from the characteristics of the SF-26, which are not ideally suited to the demands of Ferrari’s home circuit. Even so, there remains hope inside the sporting department that a weekend which looks difficult on paper could once again produce an unexpected reward. Ferrari has already experienced that at Silverstone and Spa, two circuits that appeared unfavourable but nevertheless delivered strong results – the sort of unexpected joys that, to borrow the founder’s expression, can be terrible. This year, with the FIA’s decisions concerning battery recharging also playing a role, efficiency and outright power will be decisive on Monza’s road course.
Ferrari SF-26 ADUO-2 engine arrives at Monza
Ferrari’s engine department has therefore left as little as possible to chance, working to introduce the ADUO-2 power unit in Italy. Months of development have gone into approving a specification intended to recover part of the performance deficit separating Ferrari from its rivals.
The work on ADUO-2 has resulted in a general refinement of the power unit and, following the FIA tests, homologation of Ferrari’s fourth unit of the 2026 season. The objective is to extract the best possible performance from it, although expectations should remain realistic despite some of the more optimistic figures that have circulated around the upgrade. A broader look at Ferrari’s SF-26 power unit development for Monza also shows why the gains cannot be judged solely through a headline horsepower figure.
As previously reported, cautious optimism prevails at the factory, together with the awareness that Ferrari has done as much as possible within the existing constraints. On this occasion, the work has not been accompanied by support from Shell in the form of a new fuel specification, with no petrol update planned for the evolved 067/6.
More importantly, this new engine specification will not provide the 10-horsepower increase suggested by some reports. Sources close to Ferrari instead indicate a gain of approximately 5 horsepower.
Ferrari retains the same turbo dimensions for ADUO-2
It is a modest step designed to help the SF-26 close some of the gap to its rivals while retaining a power-unit architecture unchanged from the specification used at the beginning of the season.
Crucially, the 067/6 in ADUO-2 specification uses a turbocharger with the same dimensions as Ferrari employed at the start of the championship. It does not feature a larger-diameter unit, even by the few millimetres that had been suggested in some reports.
That does not mean the turbo is identical internally. Although no obvious differences can be detected from the outside, Ferrari’s engine department has worked on the turbine itself, revising detailed characteristics in order to optimise its operation. The development follows the same underlying approach explored in Ferrari’s ADUO-2 turbo development for Monza: extracting more efficiency from the existing concept rather than simply making the turbocharger larger.
Ferrari chooses continuity with the 067/6 architecture
These changes may be small and effectively invisible from outside the power unit, while their precise details remain known only to a limited number of people. Nevertheless, they are expected to have an influence on the performance of Ferrari’s updated engine.
Maranello’s engineers have therefore chosen a path of continuity for the latest 067/6 evolution. Rather than changing the basic architecture, Ferrari has focused on refining the existing package and extracting additional performance from its internal components. More substantial or fundamentally different technical choices can wait until next year.
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