Red Bull Powertrains chief Ben Hodgkinson has issued a confident rejection of fears that its 2026 Formula 1 power unit is illegal.
The Milton Keynes-based squad will contest an F1 season with its own in-house engine this year, built in partnership with American giants Ford.
F1 will this year begin a new regulations cycle, with plethora of bold and drastic new rules which render predicting the outcome of the championship nigh on impossible.
One key new rule is the introduction of the new 50-50 hybrid engine, and the accompanying compression ratio.
The ratio, measuring the largest to small volume in the engine cylinder, has been capped at 16:1, but Red Bull and rivals Mercedes have both found a way around the problem.
Wording of the regulation itself has been deemed woolly enough by both respective HPP companies that its engines have gone beyond that 16:1 ceiling above ambient temperatures, which is the only period that it is checked.
This has led to a call for clarity by the other three manufacturers – Ferrari, Audi and Honda – and a meeting with the FIA next week, just days before the first pre-season test in Barcelona.
Speaking ahead of the Red Bull livery launch in Detroit, Hodgkinson was defiant about the furore, stating he would be “surprised” if other manufacturers hadn’t tested the limits of the regulations in a similar way.
“I think there’s some nervousness from various power unit manufacturers that there might be some clever engineering going on in some teams,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how much of it to listen to, to be honest. I’ve been doing this a very long time and it’s almost just noise. You just have to play your own race really.
“I know what we’re doing, and I’m confident that what we’re doing is legal. Of course, we’ve taken it right to the very limit of what the regulations allow. I’d be surprised if everyone hasn’t done that.
“My honest feeling is that it’s a lot of noise about nothing. I expect everyone’s going to be sitting at 16, that’s what I really expect.”
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