Red Bull has officially built the best engine on the grid. It has also failed to win a single race with it. Naturally, the team’s response was to point this out to the entire internet before anyone else could.
The FIA’s Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities scheme, ADUO for short, has crowned Red Bull Powertrains as the benchmark internal combustion engine of 2026. That sounds like a triumph. It is not, not really, because ADUO only measures raw ICE output, and having the strongest combustion engine on the grid means Red Bull gets nothing extra. No bonus homologation tokens, no consolation prize, nothing. Rivals who fall short of Red Bull’s number get to keep developing their engines further. Red Bull gets a certificate and a shrug.
A Joke With Teeth
Red Bull’s social media team, clearly bored of pretending this is all fine, decided to have some fun with it instead. The post listed the team’s actual product lineup, energy drinks, sugar-free energy drinks, tropical energy drinks, before adding a fourth entry: “the benchmark Formula One engine”. The punchline wrote itself: “One of these wasn’t in the original business plan.”
A follow-up post kept the theme going with “Red Bull and ICE, what (a)duo,” a pun so committed it deserves some respect even if it makes you groan.
It is funny. It is also, when you sit with it for more than ten seconds, a fairly brutal piece of self-awareness from a team that has watched Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes hoover up wins all year while Red Bull’s own power unit division, in its first full season building engines in-house, sits on a technical accolade nobody in the garage actually wants.
What ADUO Actually Measures
The ADUO system exists to keep the engine arms race vaguely competitive by handing extra development tokens to manufacturers whose ICE output lags behind the pace-setter. Mercedes, sitting 2 to 4 per cent behind Red Bull’s combustion output, gets one extra homologation opportunity. Audi, Ferrari and Honda, all more than 4 per cent adrift, get two each. Honda already used theirs at the Dutch Grand Prix. Ferrari cashed in at Monza.
Red Bull gets nothing, because on paper it needs nothing. Which is where the joke curdles into something closer to an argument. ADUO only looks at the combustion side of a power unit that also includes a substantial electrical component. The hybrid deployment, the energy recovery, the software that decides when and how that power actually reaches the rear wheels, none of it factors into the ranking at all. A power unit is only as good as its integration, and Red Bull’s own results this season are the clearest evidence going that the whole package still isn’t there.
Verstappen’s Not Buying the Verdict Either
Red Bull has questioned how it ended up topping this particular chart at all. The FIA has defended its methodology, though single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis has suggested the process itself could change down the line, which is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the current one.
Max Verstappen was blunter about it at the Italian Grand Prix, saying Red Bull “don’t see the same numbers” as the FIA. Coming from a driver who has watched Mercedes and Ferrari take turns winning races this season while his own car remains without a victory, that’s not a throwaway line. It’s a driver telling you the trophy on the mantelpiece doesn’t match what he feels through the pedals.
Verstappen currently sits sixth in the standings on 127 points, a hefty 140 behind championship leader Antonelli, and the recent form makes for grim reading regardless of what any ICE dyno says. Across the last three races Verstappen has managed a podium at Monza and a DNF, banking 33 points in that stretch while Antonelli banked 58. A grid boasting the benchmark engine should not be watching the title race disappear over the horizon like this.
The Numbers Nobody Wants to Print on a Trophy
Mercedes power has driven Antonelli to a string of wins this year, including the most recent one at Monza, and Ferrari’s engine has delivered victories too. Red Bull Powertrains, officially the best in class, has delivered zero. If that isn’t a self-inflicted advert for why ADUO needs a rethink, nothing is.
| ICE Output vs Benchmark | Manufacturer | Extra Homologations |
|---|---|---|
| Benchmark (0%) | Red Bull Powertrains | 0 |
| 2-4% behind | Mercedes | 1 |
| 4%+ behind | Audi | 2 |
| 4%+ behind | Ferrari | 2 |
| 4%+ behind | Honda | 2 |
Ferrari has already spent its upgrade at Monza. Honda used one at the Dutch Grand Prix. Red Bull sits there with the best combustion figures on the grid and precisely nothing to show for it beyond bragging rights it clearly finds more amusing than useful.
A Trophy That Measures the Wrong Thing
There’s a version of this story where Red Bull’s marketing department deserves genuine credit for getting ahead of the criticism before anyone else could land the punch. Owning the joke before your rivals make it for you is smart positioning, and the posts are, frankly, better written than most official team statements manage on a good day.
But the underlying point stands regardless of how good the memes are. A ranking system that hands out development tokens based purely on combustion output, in a hybrid era where the electrical side contributes roughly as much power as the ICE itself, is measuring half the equation and pretending it’s the whole exam. Red Bull has the best engine by the FIA’s own arithmetic and no wins to its name this season. Somewhere in that gap is the real story, and it has very little to do with how sharp the social media team’s punchlines are.
