Audi might be the newest badge on the grid in 2026, but it’s already learning the oldest truth in Formula 1: you don’t just race cars, you race rulebooks.
As the Bahrain test reaches its final stretch, the paddock’s attention has drifted from lap times and sidepod photography to a pair of issues that could shape the competitive order before anyone has even seen Melbourne. One is a looming showdown over the new power unit compression ratio. The other is a much more visceral problem: whether these cars are about to make race starts look like a lottery again.
At the centre of the political noise is Mercedes, alleged to have interpreted the wording around the new 16:1 compression ratio limit in a way that effectively allows a higher ratio — reported as high as 18:1 — while still “passing” the required geometric figure under the conditions the regulations specify. The key line is the measurement framework: the regulation caps geometric compression ratio at 16:1, with the procedure “detailed by each PU Manufacturer and executed at ambient temperature”.
That last part is doing a lot of work, and it’s why this has snowballed so quickly. The complaint from rival manufacturers isn’t simply “they’ve done something clever”. It’s that the method of measurement and the circumstances of that measurement may be creating a gap between what’s legal on paper and what’s possible in operation once temperatures rise and hardware behaves differently.
This is now expected to land on the desks of the Power Unit Advisory Committee this week, with a potential vote on a revised method of measuring compression ratio coming just days before the 1 March homologation deadline. And that’s what makes it combustible: after homologation, you’re not just arguing about intent, you’re arguing about whether the sport is willing to redraw the lines around hardware that’s already been signed off.
Audi team principal Jonathan Wheatley, speaking in Bahrain, struck a notably calm note given how quickly these things can become trench warfare.
“I know that the powertrain manufacturers, power unit manufacturers, are working with the FIA very closely on this,” Wheatley said. “I know what we’re being asked to test and show and measure and what have you.
“The FIA, I have absolute faith in them. We have absolute faith in their process. We know they’re a safe pair of hands. And FIA have always been here to make sure it’s a level benefit.”
It’s the kind of line that can sound like diplomatic boilerplate — until you consider Audi’s position. This is a manufacturer arriving into a brand-new engine era where early interpretation advantages can become baked-in performance for a long time. Audi doesn’t gain anything from shrugging and hoping. If Wheatley is projecting confidence, it’s because the team believes this has to be resolved through process, not paddock volume.
And that process is deliberately difficult. Any tweak would require a supermajority, meaning not only the FIA and Formula 1 but also the broader block of manufacturers would need to agree that the measurement approach needs tightening. In other words: if it changes, it’s because the sport collectively decided the original wording left too much daylight — not because one rival team shouted loud enough.
While compression ratio arguments are familiar F1 politics — grey areas, interpretations, the usual — the other flashpoint bubbling up in Bahrain is more likely to hit fans immediately: launches.
Drivers practising starts in the pit lane last week prompted genuine concern up and down the grid about how messy the opening metres of races could become, particularly at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. The root cause is one of the headline technical changes for 2026: the removal of the MGU-H.
Without that electric machine smoothing turbo response, the cars are more exposed to turbo lag and the timing sensitivities around building boost. Put simply, it’s taking longer to get everything into the right window for a clean start, and that window appears narrower — and less consistent — than what teams and drivers had become accustomed to.
Wheatley didn’t sugar-coat the mechanical reality of it.
“It is understood that by removing the electric motor from this big turbocharger that you have effectively huge turbo lag, which was more apparent in road cars at the earlier turbo development,” he said.
“Until you can use the electric motor, which is further into the start process, you have very little control over the turbo charging, the inertia in it, keeping the revs where you want.
“You hear it. Even doing starts at the end of the pit you can hear that some teams are trying to find the right balance in that. But it’s a competition, teams will learn. If the FIA thinks it needs to stay.”
That last sentence is the interesting one. Because starts sit in a strange space: they’re part driver skill, part systems engineering, part sporting spectacle. If the new rules have accidentally produced a start procedure that’s overly unpredictable — not difficult, not nuanced, but simply chaotic — then it becomes a safety and sporting equity discussion, not just a “teams will optimise it” problem.
The FIA has already been monitoring systems and procedures through Bahrain, and the expectation in the paddock is that the subject will be aired at the next F1 Commission meeting. Whether that leads to a concrete intervention is a separate question. The sport tends to be wary of “fixing” things that might naturally converge once teams learn, calibrate and refine. But it also doesn’t take much to turn Turn 1 into a recurring incident generator, and nobody wants that in Melbourne with a field still learning its new machinery.
Taken together, these two debates have the same undertone: 2026 isn’t just a fresh start technically, it’s a reminder that early governance decisions matter. Nail the definitions now and you avoid a season of point-scoring and protest threats. Get them wrong, or leave loopholes hanging in the air, and the first year of a new era risks being defined less by brilliance and more by committee rooms.
Audi’s public posture — trust the FIA, trust the process — is neat and measured. But behind it is a harder edge shared by every manufacturer in Bahrain this week: nobody wants to arrive in Australia already feeling like the rules have been won by interpretation rather than engineering.
