Is the FIA being unfair? David Coulthard: Does athletics only involve one leg?

Ahead of the traditional Grand Prix weekend, one thing is clear to the rule-makers at the FIA, the world motorsport governing body: Red Bull-Ford has the most powerful internal combustion engine. For this reason, their rivals – namely Ferrari, Mercedes, Honda and Audi – are permitted to develop their internal combustion engines, whilst Red Bull-Ford are not, all within the framework of the so-called ADUO.

ADUO stands for ‘Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities’. The aim of ADUO is to ensure that engine manufacturers who are lagging behind are given a chance to make up the deficit during the season. Manufacturers are granted development leeway if they are at least two per cent behind in terms of internal combustion engine performance.

The FIA has published the results for the second ADUO phase (covering the World Championship races from the season opener in Australia up to and including Hungary before the summer break). It concludes that Mercedes is between 2 and 4 per cent behind the class leader in terms of performance; Ferrari, Audi and Honda are more than 4 per cent behind.

FIA Head of Formula Sport Nikolas Tombazis: “The FIA has carried out a thorough and comprehensive analysis as part of our ADUO review process. With the publication of the results of the second phase, we are confident that the analysis is extremely well-founded due to the quality of the data, which gives us a high degree of confidence in our findings.”

Red Bull Racing team principal Laurent Mekies has quite rightly criticised the fact that ADUO only takes into account the performance of the internal combustion engine (approx. 530 PS). The contribution of the electric system is disregarded. It is widely accepted within the industry that Mercedes has the most powerful overall package.

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Long-serving Formula 1 driver David Coulthard has echoed this sentiment in his podcast ‘Up to Speed’. The 13-time Grand Prix winner and 2001 World Championship runner-up strongly disagrees with the FIA’s approach here.

The driver, who has competed in 246 Grand Prix races, explains: “In Formula 1, there’s an old saying that aerodynamics is king, and that’s always been something of a mantra. We tend to talk more about aerodynamics than engine power, and there have been various examples of teams winning world championships without having the most powerful engine.”

“But I feel that a real opportunity has been missed here with ADUO. The FIA says it was the teams’ wish to have a correction mechanism that was as simple as possible, which ultimately led to only the internal combustion engine being taken into account as part of the power unit.”

“To me, that’s simply not fair. You inevitably ask yourself: why is this being done? It’s as if, in athletics for example, we were to introduce some sort of limit on a specific part of the body. Then people would also say: ‘Why is this only about one leg?’ Because in competition, the whole body is used, after all.”

“Applied to Formula 1: the power unit as a whole isn’t just about the internal combustion engine. It’s also about the electric side. Sorry, but I don’t think that’s the fairest mechanism for monitoring engine performance.”

“We must bear in mind just how enormously complex these power units are. Here’s an example: we know from McLaren that they were frustrated at the start of the year because, although they have the same power unit as the Mercedes works team, they only received all the relevant information a week before the race. That simply wasn’t enough time for McLaren to carry out simulations and determine the optimal energy distribution.”

“The bottom line is that we find ourselves in a classic situation where we all have to sit back and acknowledge: this isn’t the best solution.”