Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of the Red Bull and Mercedes engine ruling?
The race is on, and with the world confused by the Mercedes engine being declared the second best in F1, we ask why it's getting upgrade brakes, and explain what's behind the driving style problems George Russell referenced during the Monaco weekend.
Chapter 2: How does the ADUO system impact engine upgrades for teams?
I'm Ed Straw, and joining me to tell all are Mark Hughes and Scott Mitchell-Malm. Well, Scott, I'm calling this podcast much Adewo about nothing because I like a pun, but it's not really nothing, is it? So let's get straight into it because Adewo, of course, is additional development and upgrade opportunities to those not on first name terms.
The FIA has ruled that the Red Bull Ford engine is the best in Formula One. And that means Mercedes, because it's deemed to be more than 2% off,
Chapter 3: What driving style issues did George Russell mention after Monaco?
is getting the chance to introduce its upgrades. One this year, one next year. Now, everybody will be listening to this thinking, well, the Mercedes power unit is the standard setter and Mercedes has won all the races. So that's baffled a lot of people. So what is going on?
It's not just the people that will be listening to this podcast as well.
Chapter 4: Why is the FIA's engine performance index controversial?
It's inside the paddock. It has prompted a significant amount of confusion, to say the least, and I suspect it will be very interesting to hear what people have to say off the record, much less on the record, in Spain about it. Basically, what it boils down to is that there's...
there's the engine, which is, in this case, the internal combustion engine, the V6, and then there's the total engine, the power unit, which combines the engine and the electric side. And with the ADUO calculations, the way that the FIA puts together this performance index to benchmark the various engines, it only judges the V6. And
There's been fears from the very start that manufacturers would work out ways that they can game this. And also kind of the criteria for benchmarking it is unknown. And that's partly because the FIA was wary of... manufacturers finding ways to basically sandbag with their engines and kind of manipulate the outcome.
So we don't really know exactly what the parameters are that they've got into, and therefore it's hard to judge how much different variables will impact what the FIA is looking at. I am aware of at least one manufacturer that thinks just purely, even if the FIA just simply goes about a V6 assessment, the basic things that you would need to analyse within the V6
Chapter 5: How are the 2026 engine regulations affecting team dynamics?
will be impacted by choices that you've made for your car design and the kind of integration of the power unit into the chassis. And therefore, you are potentially going to try and get yourself an upgrade on the engine side because you have basically deliberately compromised your engine to get an initial chassis benefit.
and put yourself in a position to upgrade the pu sort of further down the line so it is all murky partly out of design but also partly out of weird sort of f1 paranoia and and usual debate because we're waiting as we record this to get the the the final kind of revelation of everything but i don't think that's going to be particularly illuminating anyway because they're not going to say who's far like how far off everybody is and what the calculations are
Now, Mark, I'll ask you a mathematical question. What's the shenanigans to paranoia ratio on this one?
It's something in the order of 15 to 1. And if it had been under the pre-monocle regulations, it would be more like 18 to 1. But I think there's several things going on here, and it's so opaque that everybody's only got a sort of... a small part of the picture. So, you know, we, we're just putting things together just like everyone else.
Um, if I had to be, um, if I had to be betting my house on what has really resulted in this outcome, I would say probably both Mercedes and Ferrari have been deliberately not having the optimum internal combustion engine performance for this, for those first few races up to Canada. Um,
And that has resulted in Red Bull actually having the best power as measured according to the FIA's way of doing it. And I would think that that is probably a slightly false picture, but I think it's probably been made more unusual because...
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of the engine ruling for Mercedes and Ferrari?
the drivability of that Red Bull power unit is not very good. But as measured, it could well be that when it's working properly and on song, it might actually be giving the best spread of power of all of the power units. But my guess would be that there's been some gaming has gone on at both Mercedes and Ferrari.
It makes me think back to Australia and when we were looking at kind of how the different engine manufacturers were performing against the, you know, the big narrative at the time being obviously the energy demands of Albert Park and how much everybody was having to recharge, where they were deploying, what that was happening down the straits.
And we were all quite surprised at how strong the Red Bull engine cars were. at that race and it was as we'd seen in the narrative through pre-season testing it was testament to the job that rebel powertrains had done and this was an amazing start and all of this and there was a bit of a suggestion at the time and this continued into the the china weekend where we were wondering if
Red Bull actually had a really strong overall power unit when it came to that charging and whether it was the efficiency on the electric side, because it had gone so well at a race where this was a significant factor. But now, with the benefit of hindsight and this revelation and what Mark was talking about there, where are the manufacturers hurting themselves on the ICE side?
with the Agio stuff in mind.
I wonder, actually looking back to something like Melbourne, if the strength of the Red Bull engine cars was in their actual engines, so that when everybody was reduced to only using the V6, which happened quite a lot over the course of the lap because of the energy demands, you couldn't use the MG UK a lot, is that why the Red Bull engine cars were so strong at the start of the season?
It was because... per this FIA revelation, it had the strongest V6 to fall back on in those moments. This judgment is making me kind of reconsider a couple of things that have happened so far this season.
Yeah, and unfortunately, it is tricky because we don't know exactly what the metrics are because performance isn't one number, is it? Performance is three-dimensional. It's not power. There's no one thing you can attach to, oh, the engine's doing this, therefore it's the best. It's just not the way that it works. But...
The whole thing and the rationale for Addo-O people will be asking about as well because there's been kind of different, almost different interpretation of it. I thought the original idea of Addo-O was because they wanted the V6 itself to be the sort of non-competition part, if you like. That was certainly some of the language very early on in framing the rules.
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Chapter 7: How does George Russell's performance compare to his teammate?
You can do more than the best manufacturer or the second best manufacturer or whatever in terms of quantity of upgrades, but your quality should be better based on what you get. But we don't know where the manufacturers will fall within that because of this arguing that's been going on in the background. And as a result of that, other manufacturers won't know either.
And to the point of how this emerged at the end of the Monaco weekend...
What was quite funny, to be completely honest, is several teams only found out about the Aguo outcome because Lewis Hamilton had said it in the press conference and we then stood that up with our sources and run a story on Sunday evening because it was only the manufacturers that got informed about what the FIA was doing on the Sunday. The teams didn't because the teams aren't manufacturers.
So why would they get that initial assessment? So I know there were people in teams that were discovering it on Sunday evening in Monaco. And that's why it was such a surprise to people because they hadn't had that information in advance. And when they got it, they were like, well, how have they come to this solution?
Chapter 8: What listener questions are raised about McLaren and Alex Albon's future?
So... It is quite messy and I am very curious to see what the fallout is politically, like what we see when it's finally communicated and then in the coming days, maybe even weeks and months as people try to argue it or work it out because it's not set in stone, like this is the only judgment now that happens over the rest of the year. It's quite curious, quite a curious situation overall.
and to everybody listening bear in mind there are ongoing shenanigans happening literally as we speak so who knows what's going on behind the scenes but just to be clear in terms of where things are at you've got red bull as the best engine so nothing for them mercedes is in that uh is in that over two percent behind so that grants them one upgrade in 26 and one upgrade in 27 should they use it when there's associated um things for all of this in terms of cost cap and uh
and bench testing, and the other manufacturers, so Audi, Ferrari, and Honda, they're in the over 4%. So that means they get two upgrades in 26 and two upgrades in 27 if they want to do it. And then you get more stuff. But of course, just to make it even more confusing in that over 4% bracket, because the most upgrades you can get is two in 26, two in 27.
But even though that's tripped at over 4% off, there's also other tiers in terms of giving you extra resource that you're allowed to throw at doing it. But it's just, it's so complicated and opaque.
Yeah. And I have a question even still today. So, OK, Ferrari's got its two upgrades, if it wishes. And we understand it has a heavily revised power unit coming for Austria and another one coming, maybe Zandvoort, but if not Zandvoort, then Monza.
so what would have happened if they hadn't been granted their upgrades if it had been found that they were not behind not sufficiently behind what they've already done the upgrade so what happens then so my understanding is that because the first of all there was obviously for a lot of the manufacturers maybe maybe not so mercedes i would imagine there has to be have to be some people at mercedes that are even surprised that they get to
to do something but i believe the rest of the manufacturers had already committed to upgrades on the expectation they'd get something because basically they the plan was to spend the money and the dyno time in advance and then if you don't get the upgrade you're then in trouble for next year because you can't bank you you've that's got to come out of the the like the engine cost cap and the way that you're doing so you'd have to park the stuff that you're doing at the
In terms of actually introducing it as a spec change, because that is what... It's only Aduo that allows you to do that. There was a suggestion during the Monaco weekend that there'd been a little bit of softening about what you could potentially do this year as part of a bunch of the... A lot of the shenanigans Ed mentioned in the background, because obviously...
parallel to this there's the discussion over trying to get the engines changed for 2027 and there are some holdouts on that front and aduo is a part of that because the only mechanism that teams have to be able to improve or change their engine specifications is aduo but then if you give some manufacturers loads of license to do a load more well they're going to be able to massively optimize their engines for brand like a significant departure to the rule so all of this was going on
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