ADUO is supposed to make Formula 1 fairer, but if you look closely you see something else: a game of shadowboxing where no one wants to show their full strength. Technical expert Ernest Knoors takes you into the world of sandbagging, clever minds, and an engine war that largely takes place off-screen.
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Read the full technical story in the special Zandvoort edition of FORMULA 1 Magazine. The magazine is now in stores and can also be ordered here. Below is a short passage.
ADUO. Or: Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities. It’s a mouthful and currently a hot topic within Formula 1. Simply put, it means that with the introduction of this new regulation, teams with a deficit get a boost to catch up with the strongest team.
According to Knoors, teams can already cleverly anticipate this ADUO rule in advance. “For example, Ferrari deliberately chose a smaller turbo and this gave them a huge advantage at the start. Unfortunately for the Italians, they lost this advantage due to political games, purely because other teams complained that the starts were unsafe.”
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“That’s why the other teams are now all allowed to rev the engine longer to spool up the turbo before the lights go out. If the FIA had not agreed to this, Ferrari would still be leaving everyone behind at the start,” Knoors states.
Strategic choice
Knoors continues: “But by deliberately choosing this turbo, they knew they had an advantage at the start of the race, but also that they had too little power compared to the rest of the teams. This made them eligible for ADUO in advance.”
Knoors refers to the major engine upgrade Ferrari recently brought to Austria. “You don’t develop that in a week, months of work went into it. I suspect this was a strategic choice they made before the season.”
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