How the FIA plans to avoid a repeat of Mercedes’ 2014 scenario in F1

Next year, both chassis and power unit regulations will undergo sweeping changes. Several technical directors in the F1 paddock have called it the biggest overhaul of the past 50 years.

In addition to concerns from drivers about the racing in general, some fear it could pave the way for long-term dominance by a single manufacturer. Memories go back to 2014, when Mercedes’ engine proved significantly superior to the rest of the field and the factory team went on to claim every world title through to 2020.

Why the FIA doesn’t fear a repeat of Mercedes’ 2014 dominance

The FIA, however, is confident that history won’t repeat itself in F1’s new era starting in 2026. “I don’t think that we are going to have a situation where a single manufacturer has such a huge advantage as was the case in 2014,” Nikolas Tombazis told Autosport.

The FIA’s single-seater director believes the new engine formula is less complex, despite the substantial increase in electrical power: “The engines are still not as simple as we would have liked. We would have liked to go further, but we had a lot of resistance against simplifying the regulations more. So there are things that we would have liked to be even simpler, but they are still simpler than the current generation of engines. They don’t have the MGU-H, and there are a few things that have tighter limits, so we don’t think the gaps will be as big as in 2014.”

Back then, the MGU-H proved a major performance differentiator – and a very costly one. For both of those reasons it will disappear in 2026, a change that should provide newcomers with a more level playing field while also reducing development costs.

How will the concessions’ system work?

That said, it cannot be ruled out that one manufacturer may still get out of the blocks significantly better than the rest, especially since the FIA acknowledges not all power unit manufacturers are equally transparent or willing to share data about their new engines.

But even if one manufacturer dominates next year, the FIA has learned from 2014. The new regulations include a safety net, allowing underperforming brands to close the gap through so-called concessions.

“We do have newcomers, and it is always a risk at the start of a new cycle that there is some divergence initially,” Tombazis said. “Additionally, we have a cost gap for the PU manufacturers now.” It means that manufacturers who are behind cannot simply throw unlimited money at their engine projects. To still offer them possibilities to catch up, the FIA has included a new system into the 2026 regulations.

“For that reason, there is a concept called ADUO, which is an acronym for Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities,” Tombazis explained. “This concept has been the product of a lot of work. It was already there from day one of the regulations, but in the last few months more detail has been put into it to define exactly how that is going to operate.”

This, of course, raises the key question: how does it work? “Essentially every five, six races there will be an average performance measured for each PU manufacturer. Those who are below a certain level, and depending on how much below they are, will get that benefit accumulating over the year. That benefit would translate into three things: one is additional development money, some more dyno hours and the possibility to make a new homologation of the engine. So people who are behind will have the opportunity to speed up and catch up.”

The 2026 technical regulations specify that this assessment will be made after the first five race weekends each season: “Over the first five Competitions of each Championship Season in the 2026-2030 period, the FIA will monitor the performance of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) part of all the Power Units supplied by each PU Manufacturer to its customer Competitors. For each ICE supplied by the PU Manufacturers, an average power will be calculated. The methodology to calculate this power can be found in the Appendix to the Regulations. Any PU Manufacturer whose ICE power is more than 3% below that of the highest ICE power recorded amongst all the PU Manufacturers will be granted Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities.”

These extra opportunities relate to a table in Appendix 3 of the technical regulations. A special ADUO column lists which components of the ICE may still be improved if a manufacturer is granted the special status by the FIA. Several of these components are otherwise frozen for development over a specific period of time, but with ADUO status, they may still be modified to close the gap.

Nikolas Tombazis, FIA Single Seater Director

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

FIA rejects “absolutely any suggestion” of Balance of Performance

The system is designed to prevent long-term dominance, but Tombazis emphasises that it should not be seen as a Balance of Performance, as is used in series like the World Endurance Championship.

“I want to stress that I completely refute any comment about that being a Balance of Performance or anything like that, because first of all, the regulations are exactly the same for everyone. It’s not like we are giving them more cubic capacity, more fuel or whatever.

“Secondly, if there was no cost cap, they would throw a lot of money at it. When Honda were behind in 2016, 2017, for a certain period they had to spend a lot more money to catch up. With a cost cap the risk is that you would never be able to do that, and that you would be behind eternally. You would just be humiliated for a whole regulation cycle, and clearly we don’t want that. We don’t think that would be fair, and I have to say that PU manufacturers have been extremely collaborative on this topic.”

Finally, the FIA is working on a safety net for manufacturers who suffer serious reliability issues — something that cannot be ruled out at the start of a new era.

“There is an additional initiative which addresses the situation where a PU manufacturer has huge reliability issues to start with. Imagine somebody who blows up an engine each race weekend and each engine costs a lot of money. They suddenly find that they are eating their cost cap with blown engines. They have to reduce the development to stay below the cost cap, and you can imagine that would be an awful situation.

“So we’ve got some initiatives, which are going through the same phase of discussion now, and will hopefully be approved quite soon, whereby once you use more than a certain number of engines, you start having a certain cost cap relief.

“Your engines, once you exceed that number, cost very little from a cost cap point of view. Not in terms of real money, of course, they still cost the same unfortunately, but it means that we protect them from a situation where somebody is in an awful position and has no way to react under the cost cap. That would be really unfortunate.”

Combined with the slightly simpler power unit formula, this approach should avoid a repeat of 2014 and has to keep the F1 field competitive – at least on the engine side.