Red Bull has confirmed it is chasing clarity over the FIA’s stance that it has the benchmark engine in Formula 1 in 2026.
Red Bull has entered a new era in its F1 history this season, debuting it own power unit in partnership with Ford.
The venture began in 2022, when the Milton Keynes marque broke ground on its now-extensive facilities.
Its first year has seen positives and negatives, the new power unit suffering from poor reliability in comparison to the leaders, Mercedes and Ferrari.
But it suffered a shock decision by the FIA to not award it Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) to its power unit, as the governing body deemed it to have the benchmark of the new increased electrification era.
Red Bull Racing CEO and Team Principal Laurent Mekies confirmed that while it agrees with the methodology to decide this, it disagrees it has an advantage over Mercedes.
“We are completely okay with the fact that the rule states that you should only try to estimate the pecking order of the ICE power,” Mekies told media including Motorsport Week.
“We are completely okay with that, we have all agreed to that, and we don’t think that is the issue.
“Where we certainly would like to have a deeper conversation is because we do not see one single data sample that indicates that we would have an advantage over our friends at Mercedes.”
Sensitivity to power tracks?
Mekies then highlighted what he saw as different power outputs at certain circuist that could impact the results of any ICE test.
“You will need to have extreme certainty in the way you are assessing the ICE pecking order in order to have the right confidence to give it to the dominant team and not to the team that is chasing the dominant team.
“Especially when you get relative performance variations from track layout to track layout that are perfectly consistent with ICE power sensitivity.
“So you go to Canada, high ICE power sensitivity, we qualified sixth. You go to Monaco, low ICE power sensitivity, we qualify pretty much around four hundrethds from pole.
“You go to Barcelona, high again ICE power sensitivity, you qualify sixth again.
“We do not see one single data sample where we estimate ourselves higher than the competition, let alone being consistently above them.”
Red Bull was always going to contest its place as the benchmark ICE in F1, as it now finds itself at a competitive disadvantage. Whether it can successfully argue it is not the benchmark remains to be seen.
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