Formula 1 hasn’t even turned a wheel in anger in 2026 and the first proper scrap of the new era is already here: not about livery shades or sandbagging, but about the wording of the power unit rules and how they’ll be policed once the paddock gets to Melbourne.
The flashpoint is the new engine formula — a 50/50 split between electric output and internal combustion running on biofuel — and, more specifically, the language around compression ratios and when, exactly, the FIA measures what it’s supposed to measure. Off-season chatter has centred on the idea that the current checks only take place when an engine is cold, leaving a window for meaningful performance gains once everything’s up to temperature on track. Mercedes and Red Bull Powertrains Ford have both been linked to the theory in various reports, but Mercedes is the name that keeps getting spoken out loud in the corridors.
Cadillac F1 CEO Dan Towriss didn’t do much to cool that down as the sport arrives in Bahrain for the official pre-season test. Towriss, whose operation enters F1 this year with Ferrari power before a planned switch to a General Motors-designed unit later, confirmed discussions are ongoing with the FIA — and made a point of stressing where the political weight sits.
“There’s obviously a lot of dialog amongst the power unit manufacturers,” Towriss said. “I think there’s unanimous views outside of Mercedes as to what should happen.
“That will continue to take its course in dialog with the FIA, and we’ll see what happens. I think everybody agrees that we won’t see some of those advantages in ’27, and it remains to be seen how that’s going to be policed in ’26.”
The “unanimous” line is the bit that matters, because it frames this as more than the usual early-season posturing. In a sport where “everyone agrees” usually means “everyone agrees until it hurts them”, Towriss effectively painted Mercedes into a familiar corner: isolated, arguing for the status quo while the rest of the supply side leans on the regulator to close the door.
And the timing is no accident. Rival manufacturers have been pushing for clarity — and potentially a change — before the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. That’s not because they suddenly discovered a love of tidy governance; it’s because nobody wants to spend the first flyaways explaining to their boards why a rival has found free lap time in a grey area everyone missed. If the FIA is going to intervene, doing it before points are on the table is the cleanest option. Doing it after would be uglier, noisier, and probably involve lawyers.
Towriss’ comments also feed into the paddock sense that the alliances here are fluid. There has been talk that Red Bull’s position has shifted, leaving Mercedes to “fight its own corner”, as one insider put it. Whether that’s genuinely a change of principle or simply a change of leverage depends on where you sit — and on what, precisely, the FIA ends up deciding. But the broader dynamic is familiar: in F1, the quickest way to lose friends is to look like you’ve interpreted the rulebook better than everyone else.
The other detail worth keeping in mind is how much of the grid is tied into this. Mercedes will supply four teams in 2026: the works outfit, plus McLaren, Williams and Alpine. That matters because any abrupt technical directive or late rewrite doesn’t just land on Brackley — it potentially lands across a quarter of the field.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown has already batted away worst-case chatter about Mercedes-powered cars being compromised or even absent in Melbourne if the rules move too late, dismissing that kind of doomsday scenario as “typical” Formula 1 “politics”. But Brown’s public calm doesn’t make the underlying issue disappear; it just reflects the reality that customers rarely win by broadcasting panic in February.
For a rule change to be pushed through quickly, the politics are as important as the engineering. A supermajority would be required to open the process: four of the five power unit manufacturers, plus backing from both the FIA and Formula 1. If Towriss is right that everyone apart from Mercedes is aligned, the numbers suddenly look less like an obstacle and more like a formality — assuming the commercial rights holder and the governing body decide that “closing the loophole” is a better look than letting the season start under a cloud.
Still, it’s not as simple as painting Mercedes as the villain and the rest as the sport’s moral compass. F1’s technical rules are dense, and “loophole” is often just shorthand for “an interpretation we didn’t anticipate until someone made it work”. If the FIA does step in, it will have to do it in a way that doesn’t inadvertently create new problems — or punish legitimate design paths that were always within the written regulations.
What’s clear is that this is now a credibility test for the 2026 framework. The whole point of the reset was to bring manufacturers in, make the technology relevant, and keep the racing close. If the first big story of the new era becomes an argument about when an engine is measured — cold in scrutineering versus hot on track — the sport risks looking like it hasn’t learned the basic lesson: write the rule, then write the policing of the rule, then write the bit that stops smart people doing smart things with the gap between the two.
Bahrain will bring the usual fog of testing: fuel loads, engine modes, run plans, and deliberately misleading lap times. But the real early-season race might be happening in meeting rooms, with Mercedes pushing back, the rest pushing forward, and the FIA deciding how much ambiguity it’s willing to leave in place when the lights go out in Australia.
