F1 'on a dangerous path' as rivals await major FIA decision

Former F1 driver Anthony Davidson has warned the sport's bosses about allowing teams too many chances to make major changes to their power units.

The acronym of the moment is 'ADUO'. That's not your friendly neighbourhood sports writer completely failing to spell 'audio', it actually stands for Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities.

It's essentially a system by which severely underperforming power unit manufacturers (see: Honda) can apply for extra chances to upgrade their engines throughout the year at various points after the FIA's homologation deadline at the start of March.

It was not – and this is a key point – intended to simply close the gaps between the teams at the front of the pack, as Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur seems to be hoping.

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Davidson warns against sports car-like system

Sports car series like WEC and IMSA use a system called Balance of Performance to adjust cars' specs and create a more level playing field, and Davidson took his chance to warn F1 bosses against letting ADUO updates become a BoP-like system.

"What we don't want this to turn into is Balance of Performance," he said on Sky Sports' F1 Show this week. "I don't think it really has its place in F1, I think it should be about who are the best engineers, who can use their money the most wisely in that situation, and that in effect is the cost cap.

"[The cost cap] is F1's Balance of Performance. Everyone has the same pot to play with, and may the best engineering team win.

"As it stands at the moment, it seems Mercedes' power units have done the best job, but it's a complex one this year because you've got the whole electric motor side of things, and the battery integration. Is it the ICE, or is it your whole integration of the electrical side which is pretty much half of your horsepower giving you that advantage.

"You could end up going down a dangerous path here with teams saying 'we need a bit of performance gain here'.

"They might be sandbagging to get that performance gain, so this has to be handled extremely carefully, otherwise you get into that situation that we see in many other categories around the world where you have Balance of Performance and games are played."

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