Formula 1’s new 2026 power-unit regulations were supposed to create a more level playing field. Instead, the FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) system has created one of the strangest situations of the season: Red Bull-Ford has been declared the benchmark for the internal-combustion engine, while Mercedes—despite dominating much of the championship—has been given additional development opportunities.
Ferrari, meanwhile, has received the maximum allowance.
That brings us to Monza, where Ferrari is expected to introduce its second ADUO engine specification and, most importantly, a revised turbocharger.
But before asking whether Ferrari can close the gap, we need to understand exactly what the FIA has given these manufacturers—and what the ADUO measurements actually mean.
Two homologations, not two magic “tokens”
The ADUO system is essentially a regulatory safety net.
Under the 2026 rules, the FIA measures the performance of each manufacturer’s internal-combustion engine (ICE) during defined periods of the season. If an engine is sufficiently behind the benchmark, its manufacturer receives additional development opportunities.
The important thresholds are:
- 2–4% behind the benchmark: one additional homologation.
- More than 4% behind: two additional homologations.
Those additional homologations come with corresponding increases in permitted development expenditure and dyno-testing allowances. The purpose is not to hand a slower manufacturer an instant performance advantage, but to give it additional room to correct a genuine deficit.
That distinction matters.
When we talk about Ferrari having two ADUO opportunities, we are not talking about two guaranteed horsepower packages.
Ferrari gets two opportunities to homologate revised ICE hardware within the regulatory framework.
And it is already using them.
The first FIA test: Red Bull was the benchmark
The first ADUO review period ended after the Canadian Grand Prix.
That was where the controversy began.
Mercedes had won the opening races of the season and looked, on track, like the dominant power-unit manufacturer. Yet the FIA’s specific ADUO assessment did not identify Mercedes as the benchmark.
Instead, Red Bull Powertrains-Ford was judged to have the strongest ICE performance.
Mercedes was placed in the 2–4% deficit bracket, while Ferrari, Audi and Honda were assessed as being more than 4% behind the Red Bull benchmark.
That meant:
Mercedes — one additional homologation.
Ferrari — two.
Audi — two.
Honda — two.
Red Bull — none.
And this is where the politics and technical arguments began.
Because there was an obvious problem from the outside:
How could Red Bull have the benchmark engine when Mercedes was winning virtually everything?
The answer is that ADUO is not a championship-performance ranking.
The FIA is assessing the ICE under a defined methodology. It isn’t simply looking at race wins, lap times or which car is fastest.
That distinction would become central to Red Bull’s concerns.
Red Bull wanted answers
Red Bull wasn’t simply happy to accept the result.
The team sought clarification from the FIA over how the ADUO assessment had produced a result in which its new Red Bull-Ford engine was judged superior to Mercedes’ power unit.
The concern was obvious.
If Red Bull was genuinely the benchmark, then Red Bull would effectively be locked out of the additional development allowance, while Mercedes, Ferrari and Honda could spend additional resources improving their engines.
From Red Bull’s perspective, the irony was enormous.
The team wasn’t dominating the championship.
Yet its engine had been declared the standard against which everyone else was measured.
Red Bull therefore pushed the FIA for clarification and challenged the assumptions behind the assessment.
But the FIA did not overturn the finding.
Then came the second test
The second ADUO review period ended after the Hungarian Grand Prix.
This was the moment when the whole situation could have changed.
It didn’t.
The FIA’s second assessment again placed Red Bull-Ford at the top.
Mercedes remained in the 2–4% deficit bracket, while Ferrari, Audi and Honda remained more than 4% behind.
In other words, the second measurement effectively reinforced the first.
And that is hugely significant.
It means the Red Bull benchmark isn’t simply an artefact of one early-season measurement.
The FIA has now assessed the power units through two review periods and reached the same broad conclusion.
Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA’s single-seater director, described the analysis as thorough and exhaustive, while acknowledging that ADUO is being implemented for the first time and could evolve through discussions with the manufacturers.
But what exactly is Ferrari changing?
This is where we have to separate confirmed information from speculation.
Ferrari’s second ADUO specification is expected to make its debut at Monza, and reporting indicates that the package includes a new turbocharger, changes to the combustion system and an updated Shell fuel formulation.
The turbocharger is the most talked-about component.
There have been claims online of enormous gains—20, 30 horsepower or even more.
There is no solid public evidence to support those numbers.
The more credible reporting has pointed toward a potential gain of around 15 horsepower, although even that should be treated as an expectation rather than a Ferrari-confirmed figure.
And that distinction is important.
Ferrari has not publicly released a detailed dyno sheet telling us:
“The new turbo produces X horsepower.”
So anyone presenting a precise horsepower figure as established fact is going beyond what has been publicly confirmed.
What is the turbo actually supposed to do?
A turbocharger is fundamentally about using exhaust energy to compress the air entering the engine.
More effective turbocharging can help the ICE breathe more efficiently and potentially improve the engine’s ability to generate power.
But in a modern 2026 Formula 1 power unit, the turbo doesn’t exist in isolation.
The engine is part of a highly integrated hybrid system.
Therefore, Ferrari’s objective isn’t necessarily just more peak horsepower.
The bigger objective can be efficiency across the operating range.
A better turbocharger can potentially help Ferrari improve how efficiently the engine generates and uses energy, particularly under the demands of acceleration and sustained high-speed running.
That is why the turbocharger matters enormously at Monza.
But we shouldn’t confuse potential with confirmed performance.
Until Ferrari puts the engine in the SF-26 and runs it in representative conditions, we won’t know exactly how much lap time it delivers.
So can Ferrari catch Mercedes?
Here’s the answer:
No—not simply with ADUO 2.
And that may sound strange when Ferrari has been given more development freedom than Mercedes.
But the problem is that Ferrari isn’t chasing a stationary target.
Mercedes is allowed one additional 2026 homologation, and it already has an engine that has proven extremely competitive in actual racing.
More importantly, Mercedes has already been developing its 2026 power unit.
The team introduced fresh engine hardware earlier in the season and subsequently indicated that the newer units provided additional performance. Mercedes had also initially chosen not to immediately use its ADUO allowance.
That means Ferrari isn’t simply starting from a point where Mercedes is sitting still.
Mercedes has already extracted substantial performance from its original concept.
And then there is the car itself.
Ferrari isn’t just chasing an engine
This is perhaps the biggest misunderstanding surrounding ADUO.
Suppose Ferrari gains 10–15 horsepower.
That does not automatically mean the SF-26 becomes 10–15 horsepower closer to winning.
Lap time comes from the interaction between:
Power unit + energy deployment + aerodynamics + tyres + suspension + vehicle weight + cooling + traction + braking.
Ferrari can improve its engine and still lose because Mercedes or McLaren has a better overall package.
And that is precisely what we saw at Zandvoort.
Mercedes was beaten by McLaren’s improved package at the Dutch Grand Prix, with Lando Norris winning ahead of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell. Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc finished fourth and fifth.
Kimi Antonelli himself admitted afterwards that Mercedes no longer had the fastest car.
That is an enormous warning for Ferrari.
Because if Mercedes can lose its outright car advantage without even needing another major power-unit transformation, Ferrari’s task becomes much more complicated.
The Mercedes problem
Mercedes’ biggest advantage is not necessarily that it has the best ICE according to the ADUO measurement.
The FIA says it doesn’t.
Red Bull-Ford is the benchmark.
Mercedes’ advantage is that it has built an extremely effective overall 2026 package around its power unit.
And it has already banked a huge amount of championship momentum.
After the Dutch Grand Prix, Antonelli still led the drivers’ championship, while Mercedes remained comfortably ahead in the constructors’ standings.
Mercedes also has something Ferrari doesn’t have:
proof that its concept works across a wide range of circuits.
That makes catching Mercedes much harder than simply comparing dyno numbers.
And McLaren has changed the equation
Then there is McLaren.
The Dutch Grand Prix may have been more important to this discussion than it initially appeared.
McLaren’s recent upgrade package has transformed its competitive picture. Norris won at Zandvoort for his second consecutive victory, and Mercedes itself acknowledged that McLaren had taken a major step forward.
So Ferrari’s problem isn’t:
“Can we beat Mercedes?”
It’s:
“Can we improve the SF-26 faster than Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull improve theirs?”
That’s considerably harder.
But what about Red Bull?
Now we arrive at the most interesting question.
Is Red Bull still the benchmark after the Dutch Grand Prix?
According to the FIA’s ADUO measurement: yes.
But there’s an important qualification.
The second FIA assessment did not include the Dutch Grand Prix.
The second review period ended after Hungary, and the FIA’s published findings therefore pre-date Zandvoort. The Dutch Grand Prix happened afterward.
So if the question is:
“Has the FIA officially changed the benchmark after Zandvoort?”
The answer is no.
Red Bull-Ford remains the officially established ADUO benchmark.
The next scheduled assessment comes later in the season, after another defined racing period.
But if you’re asking a different question—
“Does Red Bull still look like the best overall power-unit package after Zandvoort?”
That’s much harder to answer with confidence.
The Red Bull team itself had a difficult Dutch Grand Prix weekend. Max Verstappen retired after an opening-lap crash, while Liam Lawson eventually finished seventh. Team principal Laurent Mekies acknowledged that Red Bull had taken a step backwards relative to Belgium and Hungary.
That doesn’t invalidate the FIA’s engine measurement.
It simply demonstrates why ICE benchmark and overall car benchmark are two completely different things.
The uncomfortable truth for Ferrari
Ferrari has the development freedom.
It has the new turbocharger.
It has combustion-system changes.
It has Shell working on the fuel.
It has another ADUO homologation available for 2026.
And Monza is almost the perfect laboratory for finding out whether the work has succeeded.
But Ferrari is still chasing a moving target.
Mercedes has already built a formidable package.
McLaren has found another level.
Red Bull-Ford remains the FIA’s official ICE benchmark.
And Ferrari has to make its upgrades work without compromising reliability, energy deployment or the balance of the SF-26.
That’s why the second ADUO specification matters.
Not because it will suddenly make Ferrari the fastest team.
It matters because it could finally tell us whether Ferrari’s underlying SF-26 concept was being held back by its power unit—or whether Ferrari still has a much larger car problem to solve.
Monza will provide the first real answer
And that’s what makes the Italian Grand Prix so important.
Ferrari is heading to its home race with an engine designed to address one of the weaknesses that has been hanging over the SF-26 since the start of this new regulations era.
The new turbocharger is real.
The second ADUO allowance is real.
The revised power-unit specification is real.
The widely circulated 30-horsepower claims are not established fact.
And whether the often-reported ~15-horsepower gain materialises on track remains to be seen.
What we can say with confidence is that Ferrari has been given two additional homologation opportunities because the FIA’s measurements found its ICE more than 4% behind the Red Bull benchmark.
Mercedes has been given one because it sits in the 2–4% bracket.
Red Bull has been given none because, according to the FIA’s methodology, Red Bull-Ford remains the benchmark.
And after Zandvoort?
Nothing has officially changed that verdict.
The Dutch Grand Prix may have shown that Mercedes is no longer untouchable and that McLaren has made a significant leap forward.
But it did not rewrite the FIA’s ADUO ranking.
So Ferrari’s mission at Monza isn’t to prove that Red Bull was wrong.
It’s to prove that the gap the FIA measured can actually be closed on the racetrack.
And if that new Ferrari turbocharger delivers what the engineers expect, Monza could be the first time we get a genuine answer to a question that has followed the SF-26 all season:
