Red Bull would pick “gloves-off” F1 engine fight over handicap system

ed Bull Ford Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson has expressed a preference for a “gloves-off fight” between power unit manufacturers, rather than relying on Formula 1’s new Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) system. 

As the sport moves to new engine regulations in 2026, which split power roughly 50:50 between combustion and electric, Formula 1 is aiming to avoid a repeat of Mercedes’ early turbo-hybrid dominance, as seen in 2014. 

The ADUO system will evaluate power units after the sixth, 12th, and 18th grands prix of the season,  corresponding to Miami in May, Spa-Francorchamps in July, and Singapore in October. Manufacturers lagging 2–4% behind the top engine will receive one upgrade, while those more than 4% down can introduce two. 

“I would personally love just to get rid of homologation, have a gloves-off fight, that's what I'd really like, but we are where we are, we have a cost cap and we have dyno hours limits, so I think there's enough limits in place without this,” Hodgkinson said as Red Bull revealed its 2026 car livery. 

Despite his reservations about ADUO itself, Hodgkinson believes practical factors will make it difficult for the system to fully equalise performance – including the lead time needed to develop and implement new parts. 

“Does it sufficiently reward the people that get it right? I think so,” he added. “Because the bit that I don't think is fully understood actually amongst the rule makers is, like, the gestation time of an idea in power units is much longer than it is in chassis.

“So if I need to make a change firstly I've not just got two cars to update, I've got a whole fleet of engines in the pool, so I could have 12 power units that I need to update, and so that takes time. 

 

“But also, because we're homologated you can't really take a flyer on something that isn't well proven, because you could be signing up to a world of pain. So we've got a minimum number of durability that we'd want to achieve on our new part and our new idea. 

“And our parts normally are very, very high-precision metal bits that just take time to manufacture, so we can have 12-week manufacturing time on some bits. And then it will take similar length of time to prove it all out, and then a similar length of time to get it all furnished in the race pool.” 

For these reasons, Hodgkinson does not expect ADUO to dramatically change the competitive order, even if some teams gain an early advantage, a situation potentially arising as Mercedes and Red Bull are thought to have found a loophole with the internal combustion engine’s compression ratio. 

“I think that if a team has an advantage on the power unit in race one, it's going to take some time before anyone else can catch up,” he said. “A way to peg them back is kind of what's necessary, which the ADUO does offer in some respects, but I think after six races it's assessed, so technically the seventh you can introduce the update. 

“I think that it's quite challenging to come up with an update in a couple of weeks, if I had 20 kilowatts to bolt on the engine right now, I'd do it.”