Customer Engine · QUICK TAKE
The FIA's customer engine plan has a flaw manufacturers will exploit
Gary Anderson says the logic is circular: manufacturers won't accept a cheap engine that beats them, so the customer unit will always be made inferior.
The FIA’s idea of supplying a spec engine to customer teams from 2031 sounds, on the surface, like a solution to manufacturer control. Gary Anderson, writing in The Race, argues it is nothing of the sort. His case is blunt: the moment a manufacturer is asked to accept a cheaper rival unit that might outperform its own product, it will lobby, quietly or loudly, to ensure that rival unit cannot.
The circularity is the problem. Manufacturers spend enormous sums developing power units because competitive performance is the return on that investment, whether measured in results or brand prestige. An FIA-supplied engine offered at a reduced price undermines that logic entirely. So the only commercially tolerable version of a customer engine, from a manufacturer’s perspective, is one calibrated to be slower.
Anderson points to the spec engine and gearbox tender that was put forward for the 2010-2012 period as an earlier warning. That proposal came to nothing. The details matter less than the structural lesson: whenever an independent unit threatens to undercut the manufacturers’ position, the manufacturers push back, and F1’s commercial and regulatory ecosystem gives them plenty of room to do so.
The 2026 grid sharpens the stakes. Mercedes leads the constructors’ standings on 333 points, with Ferrari on 255 and McLaren on 179. Red Bull sit fourth on 128. Below them, the gap to the midfield is steep: Alpine and Racing Bulls are on 60 and 59 respectively, while Williams have managed just 11 and Aston Martin just 1. Cadillac, the newest entry, are yet to score.
That spread is not simply an aerodynamic story. Autosport reported this week that the 2026 regulations have made power unit exploitation significantly more complex, particularly around MGU-K energy management. The hardware is nominally identical across a supply partnership: the FIA’s regulations require manufacturers to offer customers the same specification used by the works outfit. But software calibration, deployment strategies, and accumulated know-how are a different matter. Andrea Stella acknowledged a deficit in extracting performance from Mercedes HPP’s unit, and a qualifying technique involving a brief throttle lift before the finish line apparently came as a surprise to McLaren. Same hardware, different results.
This is exactly the environment Anderson is describing, even before a deliberately inferior customer engine enters the picture. If the complexity gap between a works team and a partner running identical hardware is already measurable, imagine the gap between a works outfit and a team running a unit designed, procured, and supported by a third party with no F1 institutional history.
“Having a customer engine alongside what is now basically a manufacturer power unit formula, which F1 has been pursuing for many years, is a major change of direction. It needs very careful thinking before any rash decisions are made.”
Gary Anderson, The Race
Anderson’s preferred alternative avoids the problem by working within the existing manufacturer framework. He proposes that each manufacturer be required to supply a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 3 teams, covering the full grid without introducing a parallel supply structure. Under the current arrangements, Mercedes supplies 3 teams (McLaren, Williams, and Alpine), Ferrari supplies 2 (Haas and Cadillac), Red Bull Ford supplies 2 (Red Bull Racing and Racing Bulls), Honda supplies Aston Martin, and Audi is a works-only entrant. The coverage is uneven, but the architecture is already there.
The deeper tension Anderson identifies is between the customer engine idea and the regulatory mechanisms already in place to close the competitive gap. The cost cap, revised Concorde Agreement payments, and aerodynamic testing restrictions are all levers designed to move the midfield closer to the front. Introducing a spec engine that is structurally weaker than the works units would work in the opposite direction, creating a formal hardware ceiling for the teams that can least afford to work around it.
Zak Brown’s letter to FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem, reported by Autosport, framed the concern from a team perspective: customer teams need independence from their engine suppliers, and the current dynamic can leave them commercially exposed. That is a real problem. But Anderson’s argument is that the proposed cure creates a different dependency, one on a unit the manufacturers will never allow to be competitive.
The historical parallel he reaches for is the Cosworth-Ford DFV era, when a customer-available engine underpinned much of the grid. It worked then because the DFV genuinely was the performance benchmark, not a compromised also-ran. The FIA cannot mandate that a new independent unit matches the best manufacturers; it can only mandate that the manufacturers supply it to customers on paper-equal terms. Paper-equal terms and on-track equality are two different things, and the 2026 season is already demonstrating how large that gap can be.
Ben Sulayem has been publicly supportive of a V8 formula from 2031, and Anderson shares that preference. The turbo acts as something of a sound absorber, and a lighter, simpler engine formula would address one of the fan-facing criticisms of the current era. But Anderson suggests a 2.4-litre naturally aspirated V6 without a turbo as an alternative worth considering alongside the V8, if the goal is both noise and simplicity. Either path is preferable, in his view, to grafting a customer engine onto a formula still shaped by manufacturer interests.
The grid gap in 2026 is the clearest argument for structural reform. The question is whether the FIA’s proposed solution narrows it or locks it in.
The customer engine is not a leveller if the manufacturers set its ceiling.