F1 teams are now in a race to the bottom after new rule shambles

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F1 Analysis

F1 teams are now in a race to the bottom after new rule shambles

"No, my engine is worse!"

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Saturday 20 June 2026 12:57 Updated: 13:03

Formula 1 has always been proud of its pinnacle of motorsport tag but the sport has hit a bit of an identity crisis in 2026 and, well, it's all gone a bit mental.

F1 is the industry where technological innovations are pushed to the very limit, whether through ground-effect cars, active suspension, traction control.

All sorts of neat tricks are designed to help a car be a slippery as possible in a straight line and as nailed to the road as possible in corners.

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Teams pride themselves on their ability to boast of having the best chassis, engine, brakes - just about anything in the pursuit of excellence or even some commercial interest to please the bean counters in accounts.

But the new 2026 rules for this year that have brought brand new 50/50 hybrid engines (that's not gone down well with many, so 60/40 in favour of good ol' petrol is the direction F1 is going in) have put a reset on the sport.

Now when F1 last had such a change in engine regulations in 2014, Mercedes came out the block and dominated everything for the next seven years and unless you are a Lewis Hamilton fan, no one wants to see those processional races again.

F1 2026 Regulations: Every new rule and car change explained

F1 has an ADUO problem

So a concept has been designed called Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO). You can read more in depth on them here but basically this allows teams whose engines are not quite up to speed to bank development tokens to try and improve them.

The first round of this has seen Red Bull declared to have the fastest engine, with Mercedes next fastest being given one token for this and next season to improve, while the rest of the non-Mercedes teams including Ferrari have double of what the Silver Arrows have.

FIA ADUO Analysis
Engine	Teams	Upgrades
Red Bull Powertrains	Red Bull, Racing Bulls	Benchmark
Mercedes	McLaren, Williams, Mercedes, Alpine	One Upgrade
Ferrari	Haas, Cadillac, Ferrari	Two Upgrades
Audi	Audi	Two Upgrades
Honda	Aston Martin	Two Upgrades

Red Bull have nothing, and more to the point, they are perplexed with how their engine has been ranked as the best despite the car being one of the worst produced in years. They are next to nowhere in both championships. One thing for sure, the team designing the rest of the car that have taken over following Adrian Newey's departure won't be sleeping easy right now.

Now, while the teams know about the FIA's ADUO findings, this has not been made public because Red Bull have complained to the FIA asking them to check their numbers again, a bit like a beaten politician desperately demanding a recount.

To keep it simple, the findings only focus on the ICE (internal combustion engine) power, and Red Bull boss Laurent Mekies told Autosport: “We certainly would like to have a deeper conversation [with the FIA] because we do not see one single data sample that indicates that we would have an advantage over our friends at Mercedes."

Mercedes were thought to have the best engine in F1 before FIA briefed the teams otherwise

F1's new 'verbal tanking'

The significance of this is we now have teams trying to prove to everyone else that their power units are about as much use as mid-1990s Peugeot engines that had more explosions in the back of a McLaren than a firework display.

Whether Red Bull are right or not isn't the point here. 'Tanking' is an American sports term for teams who deliberately lose so they can get the top draft picks the following season. In the spirit of F1 being under American ownership, this can be described as a verbal equivalent of it.

This is bad optics for F1. To have teams pleading engine poverty is a very negative look for a sport famed for its technological excellence.

I'm not pretending to have the answers for these complex problems, and the alternative of a 2014 timeline doesn't bear thinking about. But another layer of F1's identity is removed when teams are trying to convince governing bodies in a race to the bottom.

Unless of course the answer is just a simple return to V10 or even V8 engines. We can all dream.

Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

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