FIA concedes loophole after McLaren flags Verstappen engine swap
Max Verstappen went from the pit lane to the podium in São Paulo, and in doing so he also drove straight through a gap in the rulebook that the FIA now admits needs closing.
Red Bull took the chance to fit a fresh power unit to Verstappen’s RB21 in Brazil after committing to a pit-lane start for setup changes. The result was a brisk Sunday recovery to third—exactly the kind of upside that set off McLaren’s radar. Team boss Andrea Stella queried how that new engine should be treated under Formula 1’s financial regulations, and whether its cost ought to hit Red Bull’s cost cap if the swap wasn’t purely for reliability.
“These kinds of power unit changes challenge the regulations,” Stella said, noting he wanted clarity on whether the spend sits inside the cap if the move was performance-led.
Guenther Steiner, speaking separately, spelled out the current interpretation many in the paddock understand: if an engine is changed because it’s broken, its cost is generally outside the team budget cap; if it’s a strategic fresh unit, the value can count against it. That grey area—intent, telemetry, and the word “reliability”—is exactly where the FIA does not want to be refereeing.
FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis called it a weakness baked into the current framework. “We’ve not been keen, as the FIA, to get into a situation where when there’s an engine change, we have to argue with the team or the PU manufacturer whether a bit of telemetry indicates potentially a reliability issue or not,” he said during the Las Vegas weekend. “When you’re in that crossover area, it would be difficult. So this has been a weakness in the current regulations—the combination of Financial plus Technical and Sporting—and it’s been an area where we’ve adopted this approach where we accept these changes without getting into discussion about the impact on the cost cap.”
In other words, the FIA has chosen not to litigate intent on a case-by-case basis. Sensible for race weekends; awkward for the principle of a cost cap designed to rein in spending and performance upsides.
That awkwardness likely ends with the next ruleset. From 2026, when the new power unit rules arrive, the FIA will also apply an engine-specific cost cap. Tombazis expects that to be the natural deterrent. “With the cost cap for the PU manufacturers as well as the teams, this matter is resolved, because the PU manufacturers would never find it convenient to make a strategic change—each time it’s going to cost them approximately the cost of an engine,” he said. “We think it gets resolved completely next year. It will stop being a topic of discussion.”
Read between the lines and you see the change in leverage. Today, a works team can make a tough-to-police call and take a fresh unit with little immediate financial pain on the engine supplier side. In 2026, the supplier’s own cap becomes the gatekeeper. Frequent swaps will eat into the PU company’s budget, not just the team’s, and those internal conversations will get much shorter.
McLaren’s question, prompted by Verstappen’s Brazil charge, was never about his penalty—it was legal, strategic, and smart. It was about the accounting. Does a tactical new engine belong under the cap like a chassis upgrade might? Right now, the regulations don’t force the issue unless a line is crossed. Next year, they will.
Expect the current grey to persist for the remainder of 2025, with rivals keeping a close eye on timing and circumstances whenever a “reliability” change appears just when a pit-lane start or grid penalty already puts a car on the back foot. But the larger takeaway is that the sport is closing a loophole before the new era begins.
Verstappen’s pit-lane-to-P3 was a reminder that, when the stars align, the best teams won’t waste an opportunity. The FIA’s job is to make sure those opportunities aren’t created by accounting. From 2026, the bean counters will be just as busy as the engine dynos—and, for once, that might be the point.
