The FIA President, the ADUO Clause and the Unanswered Cadillac Question

In a press room at a European circuit there is a sound I have only heard a handful of times in nearly four decades on the beat: the silence right after an official says the one thing his own organisation will have to walk back. The microphone stays live. The ceiling fan keeps turning. For about two seconds, the whole room stops breathing.

The last time I heard it was ahead of the 2026 Spanish Grand Prix. FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem spoke about Fernando Alonso in the voice of a fan rather than the voice of a referee. He said it was "not acceptable" for Alonso to drive a car that cannot compete, and that the FIA had done "something earlier, in May, legally, for the team towards the engine to go and improve".

From the mouth of a sitting president, that is not commentary. That is a signal. And signals always find a reader.

Guenther Steiner read it. On a podcast, the former Haas team principal turned media figure answered flatly: "Nobody deserves anything." Aston Martin must figure it out themselves, that is their problem, not the federation's problem. He then flipped the story with one counter-question: if the FIA helps Aston Martin because Alonso is a two-time champion, what does the FIA owe Cadillac — the eleventh team that joined this season and has yet to score a single point?

I sit in Munich, writing for the German market, and I replayed that recording four times. Not for the wording. For the gap between the two statements — the space that holds the entire question of who is actually allowed to fix a race.

Context: a season just reset, a mechanism few noticed

2026 is the biggest regulation reset since Formula 1 went hybrid. The new power units split output roughly evenly between the combustion engine and the electrical side, sustainable fuels arrive, active aerodynamics return, and an eleventh team steps onto the grid: Cadillac. I covered the 2026 reset and the 2026 ground-effect reset. Each time, the old order cracked in the first three to five rounds, then slowly froze back into shape.

In a new cycle, a power-unit gap is the hardest kind to close. A chassis can be fixed with money and wind-tunnel time. An engine cannot — it is locked by regulations, by development budgets, by time.

That is exactly why ADUO exists: Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities, a mechanism that grants extra development scope to a power-unit manufacturer judged to be below a performance benchmark, so that a gap is not locked in for the whole cycle. It is a convergence tool, not a favour. It sits inside the rulebook, written before the season started, and it applies to anyone who falls below the threshold.

But here is the detail that matters. The FIA spokesperson, when asked, confirmed that the President's remarks related to the ADUO system. In other words, the substantive action was legal and procedural. The problem sits in the wording — in a sitting president choosing to talk about it in the language of favouritism.

And Aston Martin's 2026 power unit comes from Honda, as a works partner. That is the technical crux most coverage skips.

There are silences on a circuit that say more than any blockbuster contract. That press room was one of them.

Core analysis: ADUO is a signed admission

At 54, I have learned that emotion is also a rare form of data. But the real data in this story is elsewhere.

When a power-unit convergence mechanism is activated for a team, it stops being a rumour. It becomes paperwork. It is a signed admission that the relevant power unit sits below the performance threshold the FIA has set. Put plainly: Aston Martin's problem is most likely not in its own aerodynamics department, but upstream — where the engine comes from.

That changes how we should read Steiner. He says Aston Martin must solve this themselves. But if the deficit sits on the power-unit manufacturer's side, a significant part of the game is outside the team's direct control. Aston Martin's aerodynamicists can get everything right and still lose half a second per lap on the straights.

I have no lap-time data, no qualifying gaps, no top-speed figures in hand. The original report does not provide them either. So I will say only what I am sure of: the phrase "torrid 2026 campaign" is used, but it is not measured. And when something is not measured, it is a feeling, not a conclusion.

Here is the part I find most worth discussing.

Three layers of actors appear in this story. The first is a president speaking in a personal register: he saw a two-time champion who was "very sad". The second is the institution, which through a spokesperson immediately narrowed the scope back to engineering and regulation. The third is an outsider — Steiner — who reframed the question as one of principle. That layering is the most important signal in the whole affair: the institution is retreating from the words of its own head. An institution only retreats when it realises it has stepped past the line.

Across nearly four decades watching this sport, I have seen the FIA issue technical clarifications plenty of times. Corrections of tone are far rarer. Those are the expensive ones.

And Steiner's Cadillac question is the sorest point of all. If a precedent is set — that a team can have the federation act on its behalf because a star driver is unhappy — then where is Cadillac in that queue? An American brand entering the grid on zero points, with no champion to protect and no media weight to force a spokesperson to speak. The line between supporting technical convergence and supporting influential people is thinner than anyone admits.

There is another angle few mention. The FIA does not own the commercial rights to the series. Its role is referee; the ticket-seller is a different entity. When the referee starts speaking the seller's language, the sport's power structure tilts. That is why the reaction came so fast, and why it came from the institution rather than from a rival team.

Contrarian angle: the outrage is aimed at the wrong place

I may be wrong here, and I say so before continuing.

The sweetest mistake is the one that makes me feel I am still listening. Ben Sulayem's critics are attacking his emotion — the fact that a president loves a driver. But Formula 1 has never been commercially neutral. The series' commercial arm has repeatedly shuffled calendars, prioritised time slots and adjusted rules to keep the names that sell tickets. A president saying out loud what the whole industry is thinking is not betrayal. It is clumsiness.

The blame lies in structure, not in the heart. ADUO is a sound mechanism in principle but vague at the threshold. Who sets the threshold, measures it how, publishes it when, and which team benefits — those are questions a sport that wants to keep its credibility must answer beforehand, not afterwards. Had the performance threshold been fully published, the president's remarks would not have needed correcting. Secrecy creates suspicion. Suspicion creates rumour. Rumour produces exactly what the FIA is trying to avoid.

So I read Steiner slightly differently from the majority. He is right on the principle of responsibility — teams must handle their own side. But "nobody deserves anything" is a fine line for a podcast, not a true statement about history. Legends have always been helped, just more discreetly. What changed this week is that the helper said it out loud.

Takeaway: what I will be watching

Alonso's contract expires at the end of the season. The rumours point to Alpine, or to retirement. I do not trust unsourced rumours — but I do trust pressure. When a federation president has to speak publicly to keep a driver, the reputational cost of that driver leaving gets pushed above the value of the contract itself. Alonso has just been handed a negotiating card.

My testable prediction: Alonso's decision lands around mid-season, near the European swing, and it will be announced as a purely sporting choice. Second, if ADUO is activated for a second team, we will have a real dispute rather than a war of words.

Fans do not remember the timing sheets; they remember the breathing of a race. And lately, Alonso's breathing sounds heavier than usual.

Strategy is not a mummy — do not wrap it in museum glass. But rules are different: rules must be written where everyone can read them. If a convergence mechanism only surfaces when a champion looks sad, what is lost is not a seat. It is the FIA's standing.