Red Bull insists no data supports FIA's ADUO claim over Ford engine

Red Bull is adamant there is no evidence that Ford is currently the strongest Formula 1 engine, contrary to the FIA decision that declared it the benchmark for the ADUO upgrade system.

Teams were told in Monaco that the Red Bull Ford was the strongest ICE, thus allowing Mercedes and the other manufacturers to benefit from ADUO.

However, Red Bull subsequently challenged those findings, and the FIA has agreed to go through the data once again in order to check the results.

Laurent Mekies stressed that Red Bull has no issue with the way the system works, and especially the focus on the V6 rather than the electrical contribution.

“We are completely with the fact that the rule states that you should only try to estimate the pecking order of the ICE power,” he said after Sunday’s race in Barcelona.

“We are completely okay with that; we have all agreed to that, and we don't think that is the issue.

“Where we certainly would like to have a deeper conversation is because we do not see one single data sample that indicates that we would have an advantage over our friends at Mercedes.”

Mekies indicated that the relative performance of the teams and PUs changes between circuits.

"You will need to have extreme certainty in the way you are assessing the ICE pecking order in order to have the right confidence to give it to the dominant team, and not to the team that is chasing the dominant team,” he said.

“Especially when you get relative performance variations from track layout to track layout that are perfectly consistent with ICE power sensitivity.

“So you go to Canada, high ICE power sensitivity; we qualified at sixth. You go to Monaco, low ICE power sensitivity; we qualified pretty much four hundredths from pole.

“We go to Barcelona, high again ICE power sensitivity, you qualify sixth again.

“So all we want to make sure is we do not see one single data sample where we estimate ourselves higher than competition, let alone being consistently above them.”

Mekies also highlighted Ferrari’s form in Barcelona, hinting that it reflected the strength of the Maranello PU as well as the latest aero upgrades.

“It was a very, very large package they presented today, so well done to them for the first win with Lewis,” he said.

“The gap was closing up slowly between, I think, Mercedes and the teams chasing Mercedes in the last few races.

“And Ferrari has done a very good step forward with their package, and for them to win a race on a track like Barcelona it says a lot about the quality of chassis plus PU.”