Max Verstappen sounded unusually relaxed in Monaco when the conversation turned — again — to the power-unit politics already threatening to dominate the run-in to 2027.
For a driver who’s spent much of 2026 warning that Formula 1’s new rules package risks pushing him away from the sport, Verstappen’s message this time was less a shot across the bows and more a shrug in the direction of the people paid to make the hard calls.
“To be honest, I think these discussions are ongoing so they’re not up to me now,” he said. “But I have full belief and trust, also on the FIA side, that they make the right call for motorsport and F1 in general for the future, so I leave that up to them.”
The “discussions” he’s referring to are anything but minor. After the FIA announced last month that it had agreement in principle on a tweak to the 2026 engine formula for 2027 — shifting the power split closer to 60-40 between internal combustion and electrical output rather than the current 50-50 — the paddock quickly did what it always does: started counting votes.
Because this isn’t simply a matter of whether the idea is popular. A supermajority is required to force through a change at this stage, and there’s now significant resistance from Ferrari and Audi. That alone may be enough to freeze the plan before it becomes anything more than another well-intentioned bullet point on a slide deck.
Ferrari’s concerns are understood to centre on how the FIA intends to implement its ADUO (Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities) scheme — an attempt to manage development within the cost cap framework while maintaining a degree of competitive convergence. Audi, meanwhile, isn’t rejecting the concept outright. It’s said to be open to a 60-40 split in principle, but wants a gentler ramp: a smaller adjustment for 2027, with the full move completed in 2028.
Audi CEO Gernot Döllner laid out the manufacturer’s position bluntly in Monaco, citing the realities of development work and budget pressure.
“We would prefer to stay with what we have right now due to two reasons,” he said. “First of all, we all have to work on the system we have in the car right now. There’s a lot of stuff to optimise in our project and the change would not help us on our path to optimise the actual drivetrain.
“The other aspect is a cost cap. It would take away money from other areas that we would prefer to put the money to… That’s our view, but also the FIA’s leading the process. We are part of the process and I would expect that, in the coming days or weeks, there will be a solution and a rule for ’27.”
It’s the kind of reasoning that tends to play well in boardrooms — and less well in a sporting ecosystem that’s increasingly sensitive to what the cars look like and how they race. The FIA’s desire to adjust the split is rooted in the same anxiety Verstappen has been vocal about: how the 2026 package is likely to feel at the limit, and whether the spectacle will suffer if energy management becomes too dominant.
Verstappen has previously been clear that if the sport doesn’t address those issues — including the proposed 2027 change — he’ll have to think seriously about his own future. What’s interesting now is not that he’s softened his view, but that he’s chosen to frame this as a matter of governance rather than brinkmanship.
That may be the more effective pressure point. Because while teams will always fight for competitive advantage, nobody particularly enjoys the optics of ignoring drivers when they’re flagging an obvious problem early. Verstappen himself made that argument in Monaco, praising the way the FIA and F1 have finally brought the drivers into the room more consistently this year.
“I think what already has been very good this year is that we have been involved in the discussions and they’ve been a lot more open,” he said. “Actually having meetings with them was great — I think that’s exactly what we need to do also in the future, then I think this could have been avoided a little bit. But I think a lot of positive steps have been taken already this year for the future.”
That reference to what “could have been avoided” cut deeper than it first sounded. In April, the FIA met with drivers ahead of a vote on tweaks to the 2026 regulations before Miami — a tacit admission that parts of the original direction needed refining. The lesson, at least from Verstappen’s side, is obvious: ask the people who have to drive the thing before you lock the blueprint.
From the power-unit supplier side, the alliances are also messy. Red Bull, Mercedes and Honda are all understood to be open to modifying the engine rules for 2027, despite the disruption it would bring. But openness doesn’t equal comfort — and Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies conceded last month in Canada that the timing is a problem nobody’s thrilled about.
“We support any step that the sport wants to make to get closer to flat-out qualifying and to flat-out racing,” Mekies said. “As Red Bull Ford Powertrains, for sure, we support this change.
“You will find nobody comfortable with changing so late for next year and that’s why we have so many discussions… But certainly we are happy to step out of that comfort zone for the benefit of the sport and to get something in place for ’27.”
The subtext across all of this is familiar: F1 wants to protect the racing product without blowing up the credibility of its regulatory process. Teams want stability, but also don’t want to be the ones blamed if the new era lands with a thud. Manufacturers are balancing marketing goals against engineering realities. And Verstappen — who’s never been shy about telling the sport when it’s tying itself in knots — is now publicly betting that the grown-ups will sort it out.
Whether they can, with a supermajority hurdle and two heavyweight holdouts, is the next part of the story. The deadline pressure isn’t going away. Neither is the question Verstappen keeps forcing F1 to answer: what, exactly, is the sport optimising for?
