Honda has accepted the FIA’s opening verdict on the new ADUO performance window — and, quietly, that matters as much for what it signals politically as what it enables technically.
Under Formula 1’s Additional Development Upgrade Opportunities mechanism, introduced for 2026 to stop the new engine era hard-freezing early winners into permanent advantage, Honda has been granted the maximum two upgrade opportunities. The same allowance has also gone to Ferrari and Audi, while Mercedes has been limited to one. Red Bull Powertrains, with its first in-house internal combustion engine, has emerged as the benchmark.
The FIA hasn’t published its ADUO numbers, but the picture is now widely understood across the paddock: RBPT’s DM01 is the reference point, with Mercedes’ ICE measured more than two per cent behind it across the opening five grands prix. Everyone else is chasing with more freedom to move — but only within the tight ADUO framework, which covers the combustion engine’s performance rather than the full power unit package.
For Honda, the headline isn’t simply “two upgrades”. It’s the decision to publicly align itself with the FIA’s conclusions at a time when manufacturers have every incentive to contest methodology, framing, or margins — especially in a season where perception can quickly harden into “this project has missed”. Honda Racing’s trackside general manager and chief engineer Shintaro Orihara didn’t offer theatrics or excuses. He effectively stamped the FIA’s homework as fair, then pointed straight back at his own team’s worklist.
“We have received the information from the FIA,” Orihara said. “I couldn’t discuss details beyond how FIA described it.
“We got some number, and then now we focus to develop our home engine performance towards the summer period.
“We are working on improved combustion performance, and also with some friction to improve engine performance, so that will help us to boost our performance.”
That pairing — combustion efficiency and friction reduction — is telling. It’s less about searching for a single silver-bullet concept and more about harvesting the unglamorous percentage points that, in this ruleset, decide whether you’re attacking in the second DRS train or watching the leaders disappear on lap five.
Asked whether Honda’s own read of the order matched the FIA’s assessment, Orihara didn’t dodge it.
“Kind of similar, I think,” he said. “RBPT did a great job, I respect what they have done.
“The FIA, the number we received from FIA is quite fair.”
In other words: no public campaign, no insinuations, no hint that the system is stacked. That’s not just good PR. In 2026, with manufacturers already watching how this new governance tool is handled — and how quickly underperformers can genuinely converge — choosing cooperation over confrontation may prove strategically useful when the next set of interpretations, clarifications, and inevitable grey areas arrive.
Orihara also made it clear Honda doesn’t need ADUO to tell it what its problem is.
“Probably doesn’t matter what ADUO says, so we know where we need to improve and where we have to, is the performance,” he said. “So we have the big picture, how we improve, and we focus on what we are doing.”
That’s a neat line, but it contains the sharp reality: ADUO is a constrained opportunity, not a blank cheque. Two upgrade windows sounds generous until you remember what modern F1 development looks like — the lead times, the validation mileage, and the brutal trade-offs between performance, reliability, and integration. And because ADUO only addresses the ICE performance side, any overall step still has to play nicely with the rest of the package Aston Martin is trying to race.
The target timeline is also clear. Honda is aiming to land improvements before the summer break — which, in practical terms, means the design and decision work has to happen now, not later, if it’s going to survive the production and deployment funnel. It’s not an abstract “we’ll bring something when it’s ready” message; it’s an admission that the first five weekends have set the baseline and the next phase has to show movement.
For Aston Martin, that matters because the early points situation is already tight. The team and Honda got their first point on the board at Monaco, where Fernando Alonso dragged the AMR26 to 10th — a useful reminder that the chassis can still create opportunity on certain circuits, but also a warning that relying on those weekends isn’t a season plan.
ADUO exists to keep the new engine era honest. But it also puts a spotlight on how manufacturers handle being measured and found short of the mark. Honda’s response has been to accept the numbers, credit the leader, and get back to work — and in a paddock that can smell panic from two garages away, that calm might be the most convincing part of the story.
