ADUO, Red Bull trapped: double insult coming, here’s why

Very bitter pill to swallow The ADUO was supposed to be a virtuous step forward for F1, a ‘perfect’ middle ground between the much-maligned Balance of Performance and the risk of condemning several teams to years marked by a non-competitive engine, but for now it is proving to be a very complicated mess to unravel which leaves one perplexed to say the least. In Monaco the FIA ​​informed the teams of the results relating to the first ‘checkpoint’ and immediately those who could use the ADUO began working on the power unit as demonstrated by the fact that Audi has already brought innovations to Barcelona and Ferrari will have improvements under the hood starting today in Austria. The FIA ​​never made the results official and Red Bull was shocked because it was ranked as the best engine engineer without therefore having the possibility of intervening on the power unit. In Milton Keynes the outcry was immediate, but the request for explanations will not lead to subverting the result, on the contrary. According to what was reported by the newspaper The-Race.com, the FIA ​​would be willing to offer Red Bull a detailed explanation of the data collected and the reasons behind its decisions, even if some information relating to the performance of other power unit manufacturers cannot be disclosed for confidentiality reasons. It should be remembered that the ADUO examines only and exclusively the combustion engine, the ICE, therefore it is plausible that overall Mercedes has the best ‘power train’ including the electric part, but evidently at the ICE level Red Bull is the best and for this reason it must remain at the post even if the team principal Laurent Mekies declared that “We do not find any single data that indicates our advantage over our friends at Mercedes”. To make the situation truly paradoxical, there is the ‘grand finale’ which could put Red Bull in further difficulty: the FIA ​​will make the ADUO-1 measurements public only before the Belgian GP, ​​i.e. in about a month, and if Mercedes does not carry out interventions by the Hungarian GP to improve the performance of the power unit, Red Bull will remain the ICE of reference even when the second measurement period expires. Red Bull is essentially trapped until Mercedes (or Ferrari in case of astronomical profits) improve their combustion engine.

Automobile Magazine – Formula1 English, News

2026-06-26 17:15:00