FIA makes ADUO admission after Red Bull engine talks

Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA single seater director, conceded that improvements are probably required for its ADUO system.

That comes after Red Bull were surprised to be crowned the team with the best internal combustion engine, at the first checkpoint, triggering talks and data exchange with the governing body. That being said, Tombazis stresses that the FIA’s measurement was “very accurate.”

FIA teases ADUO tweaks

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The FIA’s ADUO [Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities] concept it a performance-balancing system newly introduced for F1 2026. It is designed to allow any manufacturers who fall behind with the new generation of power unit a chance to catch back up.

That is done by allocating engine upgrade opportunities to those manufacturers, after scheduled checkpoints.

Importantly, ADUO looks only at the internal combustion engine, not the power unit as a whole. In F1 2026, ICE power makes up roughly half of the output alongside electrical energy.

Red Bull was deemed to possess the best ICE at the first ADUO checkpoint, which caught the team off-guard. F1 2026 saw the introduction of the very first Red Bull power unit, developed in partnership with Ford.

It means that Red Bull will not be afforded a homologation upgrade opportunity. The other manufacturers have qualified for at least one.

Further eyebrows were raised when Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff suggested to Sky F1 that the manufacturer has the “most powerful power unit” on the F1 2026 grid.

Tombazis, speaking with Motorsport.com, said that “in F1 it seems that almost everything is quite sensitive.” Getting a near unanimous agreement between the teams and power unit manufacturers is “very rare” to achieve.

Nonetheless, Tombazis did indicate that ADUO tweaks were coming.

Importantly though, he defended the validity of the FIA’s measurements at checkpoint one, amid the Red Bull doubt.

“I think our measurement, in my opinion, has proven to be very accurate,” he stressed.

“With that said, has everything worked fine? No, because obviously people are not happy and so on. Do we need to think about improvements in the future? Yes, I would say so.”

He added: “I think the system is working as it was designed, but I do think there are some weaknesses that we need to address in the future.

“Also to make it less time-consuming and less controversial, we do need to make some steps to improve it in the future.”

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The ADUO concept triggered a joke from Red Bull’s four-time world champion Max Verstappen after his Hungarian Grand Prix podium.

Asked what are the main priorities for improving the RB22 over the coming months, and for his take on the engine situation, Verstappen said: “We need to first find more overall performance.

“Then we need to fix our problems, where we sometimes just lose performance over a weekend, or even from the start of the race to the end. So, yeah, that is also actually a big priority.

“Then you mentioned the engine. Well, I would love to have some ADUO as well. Yeah, somehow. But that’s… I don’t know. We’ll see. We’ll have another look after the break.”

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