The FIA wants to avoid a new era of dominance from a single engine supplier, still marked by Mercedes’ hegemony after 2014. The Federation has acknowledged that a manufacturer could gain a technical advantage when the new regulations debut in 2026, but it has put strategies in place to help others catch up. The ADUO system, development concessions that are very different from a Balance of Performance, will also include an extra budget for those in difficulty, aiming to reduce the financial impact of reliability problems.
More money for development
Unlike the revolution of 2014, the 2026 power units are being introduced under a regulatory framework that also imposes a spending cap for engine manufacturers. The system, while supporting the financial sustainability of Formula 1, does come with side effects. There have been concerns from those who feared that reliability issues, and the need to produce a larger number of engines, could crush every possibility of development.
In an interview with FormulaPassion, FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis commented on the subject: “Next year the total budget will be 190 million dollars and a complete power unit will cost around 1.5 to 2 million. It is easy to imagine that if someone broke 10 engines, they would find themselves with a 20-million-dollar hole in the budget. This could create a situation where a manufacturer has to leave Formula 1 because they would never have the chance to recover and solve the cost problems. In my opinion, the ADUO is necessary for the survival of the manufacturers.”
The ADUO, Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities, will consist of extra development concessions for engine suppliers who are at least 3% down on power compared to the benchmark manufacturer. Beyond that, Tombazis revealed that for those struggling with reliability issues, after a certain number of failures there will also be an increase in the spending cap: “The ADUO is not a system that artificially increases performance. We do not believe that a manufacturer would deliberately design their engine in a suboptimal way to benefit from concessions, because they are not a guarantee of competitiveness, they are just a little extra money in the cost cap to allow more development.”
A natural recovery
Tombazis reiterated that the concessions will be different from mechanisms used in other disciplines, such as Balance of Performance or Success Ballast: “It is important to specify that the ADUO does not give any kind of artificial performance boost directly. If a manufacturer benefits from the concessions, it does not mean they can use more fuel, more electric energy, reduce the car’s weight or other similar things. It will not be like in some other categories where there are methods to improve or reduce the performance of those who win or lose. Here we are only talking about a system that provides some extra development opportunities for those who are behind, recognizing that there are new manufacturers without ten years of history behind them.”
“In parallel, for the first time there will also be a cost containment system, a cost cap. Without ADUO, if someone was behind but had the same budget as everyone else, there would be the risk of them staying behind forever. In the history of Formula 1 there have been many teams or engine suppliers that were late. A clear example was Honda in 2016, which carried out an aggressive program to recover and eventually win championships, but all of that involved higher costs. I doubt that if there had been a cost cap at the time Honda would have been able to recover. This is a system to allow a natural recovery for those chasing.”
No parameters beyond power
Beyond financial concessions, the ADUO will guarantee 30% more hours for thermal engine bench testing, with the possibility of homologating an update before the scheduled dates in 2027 and 2029. In this case, the assignment of ADUO will be based on power measurements of the power units, measured directly on track with torque sensors mounted on the drive shafts. Specifically, concessions will be activated in the case of a confirmed gap of at least 3% compared to the benchmark manufacturer.
At the same time, there is the awareness that in 2026 power will not be everything. Solutions such as a larger turbo or bulkier radiators may help squeeze more horsepower out of the engine, but they will also bring negative effects in terms of low-end response and higher aerodynamic drag. So greater power will not necessarily translate directly into better lap times, a dynamic to be considered when assigning concessions.
“This aspect, that there are more parameters than just power to determine performance, was identified from the very beginning,” commented the FIA single-seater director. “We discussed many times whether we wanted to add other parameters into the equation, and we spoke openly with the manufacturers. The general opinion was that power was the main one. There are other important but secondary aspects, and if we had included them, they would have made the procedure too complicated,” concluded Tombazis.
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