The FIA has quietly retooled the regulatory mechanism designed to help struggling F1 power-unit manufacturers catch up, and Audi and Honda are the two names tipped to benefit most.
The governing body's ADUO programme, Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities, is the bespoke 2026 system that hands extra dyno time, money and design flexibility to power-unit projects that fall behind on lap time. After the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix forced a reshuffle of the early-season calendar, the FIA has rewritten the assessment timeline and headroom on those concessions.
Three changes anchor the rewrite.
The first ADUO checkpoint, where lap-time gaps will be evaluated, has been pushed back from after Round 6 to after Round 5, the upcoming Canadian Grand Prix, now the new opening date for the catch-up clock.
And the budget cap has been loosened. Power-unit manufacturers in their first ADUO season can now receive an $11 million downward adjustment to their cost-cap obligation, freeing engineers to chase bigger architecture changes rather than incremental fixes.
According to paddock reporting, two suppliers stand to gain the most. Audi, which entered F1 with the Sauber rebrand for 2026, and Honda, back as a full PU partner with Aston Martin after years as a Red Bull engine vendor, are understood to be losing more than a second of pure-engine lap time to the leading units.
The FIA's single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis was quick to manage expectations on what ADUO can and cannot do, framing it as a structural ladder rather than a competitive shortcut.
"ADUO is not like, some people may say, a balance of performance," Tombazis said. "You still need to make the best engine in order to win."
That framing matters. The system has drawn quiet criticism from senior figures at Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains, both of whom are anticipated to top the post-Canada power-unit league table and would, on the FIA's modelling, be ineligible for any of the new concessions. Privately, those teams worry that loosening the dyno limits creates an avenue for laggards to leapfrog rather than catch.
The official assessment of the manufacturer pecking order, which translates to dyno hours and cost-cap headroom for the rest of the season, is expected after the Montreal weekend. Honda and Aston Martin are already publicly bracing for a difficult few months. Team principal Adrian Newey conceded last week that the project felt 'powerless' against rivals, and Aston have spent recent rounds firefighting an 'impossible' gearbox installation. Audi, similarly, is yet to break into the top eight on lap-time pace at any 2026 round.
For both, the ADUO tweak is procedural breathing room. Whether it is enough to compress the gap before the second-half flyaways open up is a separate question, and one Tombazis was careful not to answer.
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*Originally published on [News Formula](https://newsformula.one/article/fia-aduo-engine-catch-up-rule-change-audi-honda-tombazis-2026). Visit for full coverage.*
