FIA decision on Red Bull power unit questioned again

The FIA recently announced the results of the second ADUO period. Red Bull Ford Powertrains once again emerged as the benchmark in terms of the combustion engine. As a result, the manufacturer gets no additional development allowance, while rivals have been able to claim that based on earlier measurements. Coulthard finds it incomprehensible that the system looks specifically at the ICE and not the total package.

That puts Red Bull Ford at a significant disadvantage in this situation, he points out. "There’s an old saying in Formula 1 that aerodynamics is king. That’s always been a kind of mantra. We usually talk about aerodynamics before we talk about power itself," he says in Up to Speed. "There have been examples of teams that became world champions without the most powerful engine. But what feels to me like a missed opportunity — and this is how the FIA explained it — is that the teams asked for the simplest possible mechanism."

That ultimately led to the decision to look only at the combustion engine of the power unit. "For me, it’s not about whether it’s fair if everyone agreed to it. It’s more: why? It’s like setting a limit in athletics based on one body part, while in the actual competition you use your whole body," the Scottish ex-driver illustrates.

The fact that the teams themselves agreed to this approach doesn’t automatically make it the best way to determine the balance of power, according to Coulthard. Especially with the new generation of power units, the electrical component plays a much bigger role. "A power unit as a whole isn’t just about the combustion engine. It’s also about the electrical energy. For me, that’s really the point. It doesn’t seem like the fairest mechanism to assess a power unit’s performance, because it focuses only on the combustion engine," he says.

He wants to emphasize that the complexity of the electrical systems today is enormous, something drivers like Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri have also made clear. "The combustion engine is one part of the power unit. Then, of course, you have deploying and recovering electrical energy. That’s tremendously complex," Coulthard continues. "We know from McLaren, for example, that at the start of the year they were frustrated. They received the same power unit, but they only got all the information about that power unit in the week before the race."

The former Red Bull driver then broadens his criticism: according to him, there are several rules in Formula 1 that were once introduced for a clear reason, but which now may no longer fit the modern sport. "That whole system of grid penalties when you replace certain components was introduced when we were trying to make the sport more reliable. Because in my era, the engines were, frankly, often like hand grenades," Coulthard explains, who is not alone in his criticism.