Next year’s rules will put an end to teams taking advantage of poor qualifying positions or grid penalties to “strategically” fit new power units, according to the FIA.

Red Bull fitted a new power unit to Max Verstappen’s car following his elimination in Q1 at Interlagos two weeks ago. Other teams have also taken advantage of poor qualifying positions to fit a new power unit and benefit from the added performance which comes from a fresh motor.

However Red Bull’s rivals McLaren questioned whether the cost of replacing an undamaged unit should count towards their spending under the budget cap. The FIA’s head of single-seater matters Nikolas Tombazis admitted the present rules do not adequately cover this area as they did not want to be drawn into arguments over what does and does not constitute legitimate grounds for replacing an engine.

“What we’ve not been keen to get involved in, as the FIA at the moment, is a situation where when there’s an engine change, we have to argue with the team or the PU manufacturer whether a bit of telemetry indicates potentially a reliability issue or not,” he said. “We don’t feel we have the expertise to argue with them whether it’s really a reliability or strategic change.

“In some cases it’s obviously in one or the other camp. But when you’re in that crossover area, it would be difficult.

“So this has been a weakness in the current regulations — the combination of financial plus technical and sporting — and it’s been an area where we’ve adopted this approach where we accept these changes without getting into discussion about the impact on the cost cap.”

Tombazis believes this situation will cease to apply in 2026, however, due to the engine cost cap. This was introduced to govern the development of the power units teams will race from next year.

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“It [will be] one of the areas where next year, with the cost cap for the PU manufacturers as well as the teams, this matter is resolved, because the PU manufacturers would never find it convenient to make a strategic change, because each time it’s going to cost them approximately the cost of an engine — a million, if it’s just the internal combustion or whatever.

“That will provide a natural mechanism. So we think it’s a weakness in the current set of regulations, where there’s no PU cost cap, but we think it gets resolved completely next year. It will stop being a topic of discussion.”

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