Red Bull would pick “gloves-off” F1 engine fight over handicap system

The weakest power unit manufacturers will get additional upgrades, but Red Bull’s Ben Hodgkinson has reservations about the system

Red Bull Ford Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson would rather have a “gloves-off fight” between power unit manufacturers, rather than Formula 1’s new Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities system.

As F1 switches to new engine regulations for 2026, featuring a near-50:50 split between combustion and electric power, the world championship is keen to avoid anyone establishing – and maintaining – a level of dominance similar to that enjoyed by Mercedes in the early days of the turbo hybrid era.

The ADUO mechanism means that power units will be evaluated after the sixth, 12th and 18th grands prix of the season – namely Miami in May, Spa-Francorchamps in July and Singapore in October for 2026. Each time, manufacturers which are between 2% and 4% down on the best engine’s power will be allowed an additional upgrade, while those who are more than 4% down will get two.

“I would personally love just to get rid of homologation, have a gloves-off fight, that's what I'd really like – but we are where we are, we have a cost cap and we have dyno hours limits, so I think there's enough limits in place without this,” Hodgkinson commented as Red Bull unveiled its 2026 car livery.

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Regardless of the British engineer’s opinion on whether ADUO should exist in itself, he also believes a number of factors will make it hard to level the playing field anyway – including the lead time for new parts.

“Does it sufficiently reward the people that get it right? I think so,” Hodgkinson added. “Because the bit that I don't think is fully understood actually amongst the rule makers is, like, the gestation time of an idea in power units is much longer than it is in chassis.

“So if I need to make a change firstly I've not just got two cars to update, I've got a whole fleet of engines in the pool, so I could have 12 power units that I need to update, and so that takes time.

Ben Hodgkinson, Max Verstappen, Laurent Mekies at Red Bull Powertrains-Ford

Photo by: Red Bull Racing

“But also, because we're homologated you can't really take a flyer on something that isn't well proven, because you could be signing up to a world of pain. So we've got a minimum number of durability that we'd want to achieve on our new part and our new idea.

“And our parts normally are very, very high-precision metal bits that just take time to manufacture, so we can have 12-week manufacturing time on some bits. And then it will take similar length of time to prove it all out, and then a similar length of time to get it all furnished in the race pool.”

Hodgkinson therefore doesn’t expect ADUO to be a game-changer if some manufacturers do get the upper hand on others – which might be the case as Mercedes and Red Bull are believed to have found a loophole regarding the compression ratio of the internal combustion engine.