u/maybe-fish

Was listening to The Race podcast for Austria and the discussion on the importance of turbos here made me curious about another potential way ADUO could be "gamed" by the teams that qualify.

The thinking is that pretty much as follows:

• Teams granted ADUO upgrades get 1/2 upgrades this year, but also 1/2 upgrades next year that they can use strategically.
• Presumably engines that have already been introduced into a drivers pool can continue to be used even once the upgraded engine has been introduced.
• With the turbos specifically, there is always a trade off between the time it takes to spool out of the corners and top speeds. Small turbo means better acceleration out of the corners, but big turbo means better too speeds - which one is better can differ based on the track.
• Newly homolgamated engines can also have different engine mappings/other tweaks to make them better suited for different track types.

So Merc/Ferrari can introduce their ADUO upgraded engine partway into next year, and then have two different options in their pool to alternate between depending on the track (e.g. a "Monza" spec for power tracks and then a more balanced engine for other tracks). But Red Bull, as the only ones to not get any upgrades, have to make compromises to ensure their engine works everywhere.

Curious if I'm missing something here that would prevent teams from doing this and if others think it's feasible? I could especially see it for someone like Mercedes, who could use their upgrades more strategically as they clearly don't have much of a performance gap to make up.

Edit: To be clear, I'm not saying they'll introduce a completely different engine just for Monza - moreso that they could potentially have the freedom to have something like a "bigger turbo" and "smaller turbo" option and alternate based on which is better at a given track. I'm not a die-hard believer anyone would/could do it, just thought it could be an interesting workaround to think through.

Just wanted to shout out Finland's incredible results in F1 considering their size:

• Only 9 drivers to ever enter F1
• 2 of those never finished a race (Kozarowitzky never qualified and Kinnunen had one start and the car retired)
• 3 different WDCs
• 5 different race winners
• 6th most wins
• 5th most podiums
• 5th most laps led
• 5th most poles
• 3rd most points
• 36 year streak of Finnish drivers in F1 (1989 to 2024)

No single dominant driver, just a tiny country consistently delivering excellent F1 drivers.