Toto Wolff jokes about Flavio Briatore call amid Mercedes F1 ADUO defence

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has defended the Formula 1 ADUO power unit upgrade mechanism – and claimed that it is better than an alternative such as balance of performance. 

The FIA triggered debate by confirming to teams at last weekend's Monaco Grand Prix that it has benchmarked the Red Bull-Ford as being the most powerful engine. 

All the other manufacturers, including Mercedes, will now benefit from being able to introduce upgrades, despite the HPP unit having proved dominant in terms of race results. Wolff insisted that the ADUO system is robust.

“In my opinion, when you speak to Nikolas [Tombazis], it's data they have measured and collected,” Wolff told media including Crash.net in Barcelona on Friday. “There is no political background, there is no favours, but it's the outcome of their analysis, of their torque sensors and the way it's being done, and that is the result.

“I think it was a protection mechanism, how it was intended to avoid the 2014 situation that one engine manufacturer was having such an advantage, and was running away, with engine, with testing mileage, and race results.

“We were the good end of that, but this is what we wanted to avoid, especially newcomers coming in, like, like Audi, and to a certain degree, Honda, with Aston Martin, Red Bull, of course. And that's what it is, and that's how it should be. And now we can say, does it need an engine adjustment, as it is in aero?”

Regarding the alternative way of equalising cars he added: “I get a rash allergy when talking about BOP, this is something that we should stay far away from in F1. It's a political mess in all the other series; it makes manufacturers go out of the sport also.

“And I've been very close to that, as you can imagine, in DTM, in GTs, in Le Mans, and we should never be tempted to have someone agree on how the balance of performance should fall out.

“If there is a mechanism that consists of fine tuning in order to make sure that nobody's embarrassed on the power unit side, I think that's the right way to go.”

Wolff also saw the lighter side of Mercedes getting a helping hand having won all the 2026 races thus far.

“The first thing I had Flavio [Briatore, Alpine chief] calling me and saying he was the deal was that he's buying the strongest engine and found out that it's not the strongest engine,” he said.

“A new homologation is definitely something that is helpful, because if you don't get that, there is quite a possibility of being leapfrogged by somebody else, who is able to do this.

“We have come with various ideas in the past. We shall see how this pans out over the next term, because we must not forget this is not a frozen situation, but it's going to be looked at every few races, and then being judged upon.

“I think it's quite easy to analyse. You can see how much ground you have from the ICE, and definitely being behind is a challenge for us. Did we get that wrong? Didn't we optimise it on the ICE side, and how can we do it better?”