George Russell isn’t buying the idea that Mercedes has rolled back the clock to 2014.
Yes, the season has started with a bang — a 1-2 in Australia and the early look of a team that’s hit the new era running — but Russell’s read is that the W17’s advantage isn’t coming from some untouchable power-unit edge. In fact, he thinks the paddock’s been too quick to obsess over what’s bolted to the back of the car and not quick enough to credit what Mercedes has actually put on the road.
In Russell’s view, this regulation reset doesn’t resemble the last time Formula 1 tore up its engine rulebook. Back then, Mercedes’ early hybrid work turned into a margin so chunky that the rest of the field spent years trying to claw it back. The telltale sign, he argues, was that even the customer teams running Mercedes power couldn’t get close.
That simply isn’t the landscape now.
“Well, I think it’s not comparable to 2014 because, in 2014, Mercedes had a major advantage on the power unit compared to every other manufacturer, and there wasn’t a team with a Mercedes engine that could compete,” Russell said during media day in China.
The more pointed comparison, he suggested, is what’s happened recently with Mercedes-powered teams. The last two champions have been won by a car running a Mercedes power unit, which undercuts the notion that Mercedes is operating in a separate category in 2026.
“So, you know McLaren are capable of fighting against us,” he continued. “And Ferrari and Red Bull have seemingly produced a power unit that is very close to what we have.”
That last line is doing a lot of work. Over the winter, the easy paddock narrative was that Mercedes High Performance Powertrains would again be the class reference — a comfortable assumption, given its track record and the fact that others have had to build new structures to tackle the new cycle. Ferrari’s engine programme is as established as they come, but Red Bull Powertrains has been on a multi-year sprint to be ready, while Audi’s project has also had a long runway into 2026.
Red Bull’s effort, in particular, has been shaped by a recruitment push that included engineers from Mercedes and the appointment of Ben Hodgkinson — a long-time Brixworth figure — as its first technical director. Russell’s point is that, with that level of investment across the grid, it was always unlikely we’d see a repeat of the kind of manufacturer gap that defined the early hybrid era.
If the engines are “very close”, then the uncomfortable implication for everyone else is that Mercedes has simply done a better job with the car.
“At the moment, the differences look to be coming from the car,” Russell said. “I think we have produced a really good car this year. There’s lots of talk around the engine, and of course, the engine is great, but the car is fantastic as well, and that isn’t being given the credit it deserves.”
It’s also a subtle shift in how Mercedes wants this story told. For years, the team has carried the baggage of being reduced to “engine advantage” debates — even when its chassis was often the difference-maker — and there’s a clear eagerness to put the W17 in the spotlight as a complete package rather than a power-unit headline.
Russell isn’t naïve about what usually happens next. He expects convergence, quickly. The competitive order in Australia wasn’t necessarily a clean reading of where 2026 will settle, and he leaned on Red Bull as the obvious example of how misleading one weekend can be.
“I’m sure it will close up quick,” he said. “Max [Verstappen] wasn’t in the fight last week, and his teammate [Isack Hadjar] qualified third, so you could have expected him to have been in the fight with a usual Saturday.”
That’s the other message embedded in Russell’s comments: don’t overreact. Melbourne is a circuit that can exaggerate strengths and hide weaknesses, and the early season is where correlation between expectation and reality is at its loosest. If Red Bull can look off-colour and still put one car third on the grid, Russell’s right that the margins can’t be huge.
Still, Mercedes won the first real punch of the new era. Whether that proves to be the start of a sustained run or simply the cleanest opening move, Russell’s framing is clear: if rivals want to understand why the W17 has arrived so sharp, they might need to stop staring at the dyno charts and start asking harder questions about what Mercedes has found in the rest of the car.
