Ferrari might have put Lewis Hamilton in the SF-26 for a low-key Barcelona shakedown, but the more consequential new thing in Maranello this winter isn’t the driver line-up or even the chassis. It’s the rulebook around the power unit — and the small-print politics it’s designed to keep under control.
With the 2026 engine regulations arriving under an engine freeze, the FIA has bolted on a new safeguard intended to prevent the season turning into a one-brand exhibition. The mechanism is called Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO), and the idea is straightforward enough: if a manufacturer is demonstrably behind on performance, it gets extra scope to develop during the year.
That’s a meaningful intervention in a category that’s trying to sell 2026 as a clean-sheet reset — new 50/50 split between electric power and fully sustainable biofuel, fresh manufacturers and partnerships, and the usual promise that everyone starts equal until someone doesn’t. ADUO is the FIA acknowledging, in advance, that someone probably won’t.
Under the system, the FIA will take measurements at three points in the season — at 25, 50 and 75 per cent distance — and can open the door to additional development for any of the five manufacturers who have built power units to the new rules: Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull Ford, Honda and Audi. The point is to help any of them “address deficits” if they’re lagging behind on engine performance.
As soon as you build a framework like that, paddock minds inevitably wander to the loopholes: could a manufacturer mask its true level early on, take the development allowances, then unleash everything later? It’s the sort of question teams ask not because they’re planning to do it, but because they assume a rival might.
Ferrari’s engine chief Enrico Gualtieri, though, is publicly relaxed about the prospect of anyone gaming the system — and, perhaps more tellingly, relaxed about the system itself.
“The ADUO mechanism, for being able to have additional upgrades and development opportunities during the season,” Gualtieri said when asked about the concept and whether it risks rewarding those who miss the target first time. “It’s a new process for everyone. It’s a new process for the FIA. It’s a new process for the power unit manufacturers.
“I feel that it’s quite well prescribed into the definition [of what is allowed]. Obviously, we will take some time to get used to it, to the outcomes, but I think it’s robust enough to go on with what we think may be the final target of this mechanism.
“So for the moment, we are certainly comfortable with the process.”
That “comfortable” line matters. Not because it guarantees Ferrari has nailed the 2026 power unit — nobody’s going to declare victory in January — but because it signals Ferrari doesn’t see ADUO as an immediate threat to competitive fairness. In other words, Maranello isn’t currently acting like a team terrified the goalposts will move mid-season.
Gualtieri also left the door open to the FIA refining the framework once real-world consequences appear — which is a polite way of saying everyone expects some messiness once theory becomes lap time.
“Despite that, we obviously keep in touch with the FIA in case of any additional requirements. But for the moment, it is fine for us,” he added.
Ferrari’s other big 2026 adjustment is fuel-related — not so much what ends up in the tank, but how it gets there. The new engines will run on fully sustainable biofuels, and Gualtieri’s take was refreshingly pragmatic: the chemistry targets look familiar; it’s the sourcing rules that change the work.
“In terms of the new fuel, so advanced sustainable fuel, we have to say that it’s not really a big change in terms of final composition of the fuel,” he explained. “Finally, the fuel is supposed to be designed almost in the same way that it was before. Because finally, what it counts at the end of the story are the molecules and the properties that these molecules can, let’s say, achieve and deploy.
“So the engine appetite doesn’t really change a lot, meaning that the fuel design is almost similar to what we were using before.”
Where the squeeze comes is upstream, with sustainability requirements forcing a stricter framework around feedstocks and supply chain — the raw materials and provenance that underpin the “sustainable” label.
“What is really the big change compared to the last season… is that now the fuel has to comply with restrictions in terms of supply chain, in terms of feed stocks, so in terms of original or raw materials from which the fuel has to start, just for the sustainability reasons,” Gualtieri said.
“So this is an additional point on top of the performance and efficiency that we were always looking for from a fuel. And this is certainly something that changed the way that us and the fuel suppliers have got the exercise to define the proper fuel design at the end of the story.”
For an F1 audience, none of this is as glamorous as onboard footage from Hamilton’s first Ferrari laps. But it’s the stuff that will decide whether 2026 becomes a proper multi-way fight or a season spent waiting for the FIA’s calendar checkpoints to see who qualifies for a helping hand — and who doesn’t.
If Ferrari’s power unit group truly is “comfortable” with ADUO, it’s either because they trust the policing, trust their own baseline, or both. And if the system is as robust as Gualtieri believes, then the manufacturer that gets 2026 wrong won’t be able to hide behind process complaints — it’ll simply have to use the lifeline and climb.
