Guenther Steiner, Mohammed Ben Sulayem and the FIA's Thin Line of Neutrality in the 2026 Cycle

One Remark, Two Readings

On the 2026 constructors' table, Cadillac — the eleventh team to enter Formula 1 — has yet to score a single point after several rounds. Meanwhile, at Aston Martin, a two-time world champion is entering the final months of his contract, in a mood described by a senior official as "very sad." Place those two facts side by side, and you do not get a technical story. You get a question about how a governing body talks about the teams it governs.

What stopped me was not the standings. It was the timing. Ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix — the home race of Fernando Alonso — FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem said it is "not acceptable" for a driver of Alonso's calibre to be running at the back. He also referenced the FIA having "done something earlier, in May, legally for the team towards the engine to go and improve." An FIA spokesperson later confirmed those comments related to the ADUO system.

Then Guenther Steiner — former Haas team principal, now a media personality — responded on a podcast. He said: "Nobody deserves anything. Aston Martin needs to figure that out. That is not the federation's problem."

Three statements, three different actors: a sitting president, an institution, a commentator. And in between sits a question as old as the sport itself: who is responsible when a team runs slow?

Context: A Cycle Just Reset

2026 is the first year of a new regulatory cycle. Hybrid power units have been redesigned with a greater electrical share, active aerodynamics have arrived, sustainable fuels are mandatory, and an eleventh team — Cadillac — has joined. Four variables changed at once. Never in F1 history have so many structural variables been rewritten simultaneously.

In previous reset cycles — 2026, 2026, 2026, 2026 — the early phase has always been the period of greatest performance dispersion. When the technical framework changes, the gap between the team that reads the rules fastest and the team that reads them slowest typically stretches, then compresses over two to three seasons. That is the pattern, not a surprise. In 2026, Brawn GP won both championships by understanding the double diffuser before everyone else. In 2026, Mercedes locked in six consecutive seasons of dominance simply because it understood one power unit system better. A regulation reset does not seed fairness; it seeds an opportunity to reshuffle. And that opportunity is not evenly distributed.

But there is a structural difference in the 2026 cycle: the engine. When a team falls behind on chassis, it can fix things within months through an aero package, a new floor, a different development direction. When a team falls behind on the engine, it is locked in for far longer — because the power unit is constrained by homologation rules, by allocated development budgets, and by supply chains with customer teams running the same power unit. An engine-level mistake is more expensive than a chassis-level mistake, and harder to fix. That is precisely why the 2026 rulebook had to build a mechanism to stop such a gap from freezing over.

ADUO: A Balancing Tool or a Moral Line?

This is why ADUO exists. ADUO — Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities — is the mechanism within the 2026 power unit regulations that grants additional development allowances to a manufacturer whose power unit is judged to be below a defined performance benchmark. In other words, it is a tool to prevent a performance gap from freezing for too long and damaging the sport's competitiveness. Its logic mirrors that of the reverse-order ATR on the chassis side: weaker teams get more development time, stronger teams are restricted. It is a design choice to prevent permanent dominance, not a privilege.

When an FIA spokesperson confirms the President's comments related to ADUO, that is not a minor technical detail. It is a structural admission: the power unit in question sits below the predetermined performance threshold. And in this case, the team in question is Aston Martin. That information has quantitative value, even if the original article provides no specific figure.

ADUO must be read correctly. It is not arbitrary intervention. It is a pre-designed mechanism, applied on technical criteria, and — at least on paper — transparent. If ADUO is applied as intended, then Aston Martin receiving additional engine development opportunities is not wrong. It is the system operating as designed. The problem lies elsewhere: who talks about it, and how.

A spokesperson saying a technical mechanism has been triggered for one manufacturer is one thing. An FIA President saying publicly that it is "not acceptable" for a specific driver to be running at the back, and linking that to the FIA having "done something for the team," is something else entirely. The first is management. The second is advocacy. And between the two lies a line the sport's governing body has never been permitted to cross.

What the Data Says So Far

I have to be blunt: the original article provides no performance figures whatsoever. No lap-time gap, no top-speed data, no sector analysis, no tyre degradation numbers. Aston Martin's "torrid 2026 campaign" is asserted but not quantified. That is a notable gap, and based on my experience monitoring races, it says something.

When media have data, they use data. When they don't, they use adjectives. Here, the entire story is built on adjectives: "torrid," "not acceptable," "very sad." Not a single table. But the way the story is told reveals the data. ADUO is a threshold. A manufacturer only receives additional development opportunities when its power unit is judged to sit below that threshold. The triggering of this mechanism for the engine in question is a quantitative signal — not about the size of the deficit, but about the fact that the deficit has crossed a predetermined line.

And there is one more detail. Ben Sulayem stressed that the action in May was "legal." That word matters. A governing body does not need to stress the legality of a standard process. When it does, it is usually because someone, somewhere, has already questioned it. A president's word choices often reveal more than the content he intends to convey. In this case, it reveals that the process was doubted before it was even stated publicly.

Three Layers of the Same Story

What makes this story worth analysing is not the content of each statement, but its three-layer structure.

The first layer is personal sentiment. Ben Sulayem said he saw Alonso "very sad." That is an emotionally charged phrasing, aimed at eliciting fan sympathy for a beloved champion. On a purely human level, it is sincere. But a governing body's president has no licence to be sincere in public about a specific team — because that sincerity gets read as bias.

The second layer is the institutional position. The FIA spokesperson quickly narrowed the scope of the comments, tracing them back to the ADUO system. This is a retreat move. A governing body realises a statement has gone beyond its official position, and needs to be pulled back into the technical framework. In the history of sports governance, such "clarifications" are rarely a sign of a firm position. They are a sign of a position that needed correcting.

The third layer is media commentary. Steiner — no longer running any team, but still speaking with the credibility of a former team principal — offers a principled rebuttal. He defends neither side. He questions the premise itself. His credibility here comes not from office, but from having made recruitment, cutback and result-accountability decisions himself. That is a kind of credibility a spokesperson does not have.

These three layers do not contradict each other. They stack on top of each other and generate far more noise than the underlying issue. A technical mechanism designed, approved and triggered in silence suddenly becomes a controversy about the governing body's neutrality — purely because of how it was voiced.

The Cadillac Question: The Sharpest Point in the Governance Problem

If the story stopped at Alonso and Aston Martin, it would be an emotional debate. Steiner turns it into a principled one by introducing a comparison.

Cadillac is the eleventh team, entering this season, and has yet to score a point. If the standard is "a driver of that stature should not be running at the back," Cadillac meets that standard more severely. If the standard is "a team with heritage should not fall behind," Cadillac — a new name in F1 but a major automotive brand — raises a similar question. Here there is no two-time champion to stir emotion. Only a new team, pointless, with no collective voice defending it.

Steiner's point is not that Cadillac deserves help. His point is: if the FIA starts helping this team for sentimental reasons, what line stops it helping another team for another sentimental reason? And if no line exists, what remains of the governing body beyond the role of a selective patron? In a sport where prize money is distributed by final standings, selectivity in support is not just an image problem — it is a money problem.

This is the question the original article leaves open. No principled answer is offered. And in a sport where performance gaps are managed through complex mechanisms like development budgets, aero testing time, and power unit thresholds, the absence of a principled answer is a problem. Not merely a communications problem. A governance problem.

Alonso's Transfer Market Position

Setting the governance story aside, there is a market reality that cannot be ignored. Alonso's Aston Martin contract expires at season's end. Multiple rumours — unconfirmed by specific sourcing — suggest he could move to Alpine or retire.

This is where rumours must be filtered by origin. Rumours about an out-of-contract star driver typically serve one purpose: increasing negotiating leverage. A driver's representative may leak to create pressure; a team may leak for its own reasons. There is no evidence of a specific source in this case, so their credibility should be handled as medium or low until confirmed. A rumour without a specific attribution is an unverified rumour — and in my profession, an unverified number is not used to build conclusions.

What is interesting here is that an unusual third party has entered a two-party market negotiation. When the head of the governing body publicly expresses a wish for a driver to continue, he inadvertently raises the perceived cost of that driver leaving. In a contract negotiation, that can shift the balance. A public compliment from the FIA presidential chair carries a different value than one from a commentator — and both the team and the driver's representative know it.

If Alonso retires, Aston Martin faces another problem: no named successor. In a team already behind on the engine, losing its most commercially valuable driver is a double blow. If Alonso returns to Alpine, it would be a narrative homecoming — commercial value independent of the car's competitiveness. Alpine's competitiveness is no clearer than Aston Martin's, but the story is more compelling.

A governing body verbally intervening in a driver-market negotiation is unusual. It violates no rule. But it blurs a line the sport has spent decades building — the line between the rule-maker and the players.

The Line Between Operator and Patron

What strikes me most about this story is not that it is controversial, but that it exposes a long-standing issue: the boundary between the FIA's operational role and its role as patron.

FIA is the regulator. Its job is to write the rules, enforce them, and ensure a level playing field. When its president speaks publicly about wishing a specific team would run faster, he crosses that line — even if only in a single sentence. F1's history has periods where the governing body and the commercial rights holder clashed openly. It also has periods where presidents were criticised for voices that leaned too far one way. But a sitting president speaking about a specific team in the language of "that team deserves help" is another step.

Here the data does not lie. The ADUO mechanism has been triggered. It was triggered legally. The relevant engine manufacturer sits below the performance threshold. All of this is a correct technical process. But when a sitting president speaks of it as an action "for the team," he turns a neutral technical process into a deliberate act. And that is where the problem begins.

ADUO does not distinguish Alonso from any other driver. It distinguishes an engine below threshold from an engine above it. That is its logic. Anyone who turns it into a story about a specific driver — whether to defend or to criticise — is changing its nature. In my profession, that is called reading structure as personality. It tends to happen when stories are told by emotion rather than by data.

What Will Shape the Next Round

As someone who has watched F1 through many regulatory cycles, I see three signals worth monitoring in the coming weeks and months.

First, Alonso's contract decision. If he retires or moves to Alpine, this story shifts from a principled debate into market news. Expected timing: around the Spanish Grand Prix and through mid-season.

Second, the ADUO application pattern. If the mechanism is used for more manufacturers during the season, that is a sign that the engine gap in the 2026 cycle is more severe than expected. If it is used only once, it remains a tool but not yet a pattern. And if it becomes a pattern, questions about customer teams and new entrants return more forcefully.

Third, FIA communications discipline. If the president again publicly expresses views on a specific team, the neutrality risk rises. If not, the spokesperson has successfully reclaimed scope. Either way, how the governing body talks will be a clearer indicator than how teams race.

Contrarian View: Data Never Rushes, But People Always Do

There is another reading I want to place on the table, uncomfortable as it is.

Perhaps Ben Sulayem was not wrong in substance, only clumsy in form. In a reset cycle, an engine falling below threshold is not unusual. The governing body having a tool to handle it is not unusual either. What is unusual is a sitting president linking that technical tool to a specific champion and describing it in emotional language.

Separate form from content, and the content is reasonable: the FIA triggered ADUO on time, by the process, for an engine below threshold. The form is damaging: it was voiced as an act for one person. And here is the point I want to stress: content and form cannot be separated in the public eye. A correct mechanism described wrongly becomes a doubted mechanism.

This is where Steiner is right in principle but possibly wrong in nuance. "Nobody deserves anything" is a true statement about competition — on-track results are the team's responsibility. But in a sport designed with deliberate balancing mechanisms, that statement can be read as a denial of the very tools the organisers built to keep the championship competitive.

ADUO exists precisely because there are cases where a team cannot solve its own problem within a reasonable timeframe. If that were not true, the mechanism would not need to exist. So when Steiner says "that is not the federation's problem," he is arguing against a principle the 2026 rulebook itself has already accepted — albeit in technical rather than emotional form. He is right to defend the neutrality line. He may have gone too far in denying the structural need behind that line.

Here I want to lower my voice. This is not a story with clear right and wrong. It is a story about two principles that are both correct: the principle that on-track results belong to teams, and the principle that a governing body may intervene to prevent a performance gap from freezing. Both are correct. And both are easily abused if not voiced carefully.

Conclusion: The Number Not Yet Spoken

Across decades of watching F1, I have learned a simple thing: the loudest controversies usually conceal the quietest problems. The row between Ben Sulayem and Steiner sounds loud. But the real issue sits somewhere quiet: a technical mechanism called ADUO has been triggered for an engine, and that means some manufacturer is trailing below the threshold the sport considers acceptable.

That number — the performance threshold — is the number not yet published. It is the most important number in this story, and it appears in none of the commentary. At 60, I no longer believe in luck; I only believe in numbers that have not yet been spoken.

When the commentary dies down and the Spanish Grand Prix passes, the question will remain: can a new regulatory cycle, with a new team, an engine below threshold, and a two-time champion weighing his future, hold the balance it was designed to create — or will the noise of media always outrun the data, as it usually does. Every sporting cycle imitates the data of the one before, and nobody learns.