Performance, describing it as a “political mess” which triggers a
“rash of allergies.” BoP has been commonplace in sportscar racing
to ensure cars across a category are weighted fairly, with one
example being Toyota being subject to it during the final days of
the old LMP1 era after the likes of Porsche and Audi withdrew from
the WEC. However, it is a controversial topic, given it can be used
to peg back teams which have done a better job than others. BoP has
never been a part of F1, but with the FIA’s new “protection
mechanism” of ADUO to help struggling 2026 power unit
manufacturers, Wolff has previously sounded a warning that it could
be used to allow strugglers to “leapfrog” the best-performing PUs.
Going further, the Austrian described how BoP should stay firmly
away from F1 and praised the “fine-tuning” effects of ADUO. “I
think it was a protection mechanism, how it was intended to be, to
avoid the 2014 situation of one engine manufacturer having such an
advantage and was running away with testing mileage and race
results,” Wolff said of the idea of ADUO. “We were on the good end
of that, but this is what we wanted to avoid, especially newcomers
coming in like Audi and, to a certain degree, Honda with Aston
Martin and also Red Bull, of course. “And that’s what it is, and
that’s how it should be. Now we can say, does it need an engine
adjustment as it is in aero? I get a rash of allergies when talking
about BoP. This is something that we should stay far away from
Formula 1. “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. “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, because
when you look at aerodynamics, that was invented for a completely
different situation.”