Is the FIA right to help Alonso and Honda?
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Is the FIA’s support for Honda and Alonso fair and justified?
The athletic.
The race is on! And with Fernando Alonso's F1 future still up in the air, it looks like Honda is gonna get a helping hand with the support of FIA President Mohammed Ben Saloem and rival manufacturers. But is this fair? And elsewhere, how significant is Alpine's latest technical appointment in its attempt to climb the grid? I'm Ed Straw and join me to chat about the latest machinations in F1 are Glenn Freeman and John Noble. Well, welcome to the Race F1 podcast presented by Atlassian. John, we'll we'll get straight into it because the story about Mohamed Ben Sully and what he said during the Madrid Grand Prix weekend, his support of the need for changes to help Honda, but framed in terms of making sure Fernando Alonso stays in Formula One and isn't forced out by lack of performance.
So what do we know about where that? That plan is now.
Yeah, so talks are advancing about isn't and this isn't just about helping Honda, and it's not just about helping Fernando Alonso. There is now movement that's going to accelerate over the next weeks to actually change Aduo and engine homologations and upgrades and development and all those opportunities that have proved to be controversial this year. So Ben Salim's comments about helping Fernando, keeping him in Formula One, uh helping Honda. Fondo are all part of a much bigger picture that involves a rethink about how F one's judged its engine balancing, judged its catch up mechanism, how it works, and just making it better for everybody.
Yeah, I made the mistake of thinking coming into this year that the Ada O system had been well thought out because they said, Oh, we've got our metrics, all this kind of thing. I remember saying on a podcast, well, it should be measurable, they've got all the data, uh, how wrong I wrong I was there. But Glenn Looking at the sort of big picture, it's just indicative that the whole Aduo thing and of course Aduo's uh additional uh development and upgrade opportunities, ADO's our favourite acronym for F one in twenty twenty six, but it's just not really worked. It's just been misconceived, hasn't it? It's
classic F one, isn't it? It's something that's been overthought and then given a stupid acronym. I I know I I didn't quite have as much faith as you did in the process, but I'd still say that they are below my expectations for how this this worked. When this came about, I and this this may be wrong, but I I kind of always envisioned it would be under the last rule set, you'd always hear Renault and whoever was in charge at Alpine moaning about, oh, our engine's this many percent off, we should be allowed to catch up. And I assumed that when they came up with this system, that was what it was going to be. If somebody if one person's too far off the back, give them a mechanism to catch up. But common sense can never preva prevail in F1.
So there has to be a an over-regulated system that then causes all these knock-on effects. So it's no longer about you know, no one would dispute that Honda are in a situation where something like this needs to exist. So they can catch up. But F1 has created a system where everybody else, except for one power unit manufacturer, Red Bull obviously, everyone else has got mechanisms to catch up. And for me, that was that shouldn't have been the point of this. I don't think this should have been performance balancing across the grid. It should have been catch up mechanism for anyone who gets it completely wrong. And as we can see, that is not what we've got at all.
Which is sort of the objective for it to have been that. And obviously the V six itself is being measured 'cause the idea is the internal combustion engine. At one stage it was talked about as the non competition element of the power unit. They wanted the energy recovery, the battery side, to be the competition element. Nonsense. And then of course you can apply your aduo stuff to to everything. And it's it reminds me actually of how they used to do this because everybody remembers the uh the the rules that they had which was
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Is the FIA’s support for Honda and Alonso fair and justified?
0:02–7:17
2
How does the ADUO (Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities) system work and why is it controversial?
7:17–13:14
3
What are the main technical problems Honda is facing with its power unit?
13:14–20:10
4
Should the FIA intervene to keep a driver on the grid, or is that a misuse of regulatory power?
20:10–26:20
5
What rule changes are expected for the 2027 season and how might they affect the ADUO system?
26:20–32:49
6
Why did Alpine hire former Mercedes chief Mike Elliott and how could his appointment impact the team?
32:49–39:20
7
Why can’t Melbourne host the opening race of 2027 and what are the alternatives being considered?
39:20–45:47
8
What was the Max Verstappen vs. 100 kart‑drivers event and why does it matter for F1’s fan engagement?
45:47–52:51
Speakers
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