‘Empty cans’ and engine whispers: Red Bull’s Hodgkinson pokes the Mercedes 2026 hype
Red Bull Powertrains technical director Ben Hodgkinson has poured a cool bucket of water over winter whispers that Mercedes will arrive in 2026 with the class-leading power unit — and he’s not ruling out the idea that the noise started in Brackley.
As Formula 1 heads for its hybrid reset next year — same 1.6-litre V6 architecture, but with a far beefier electrical load and an ICE/ERS split closer to 50/50 — the paddock’s favourite game is ranking dynos we can’t see. The consensus rumor? Mercedes is the benchmark. Hodgkinson, who spent two decades at Mercedes HPP (stretching back to the Ilmor days) before joining Red Bull Powertrains in 2022, isn’t buying it.
“I think a lot of that talk originated from Mercedes themselves,” he told reporters around Red Bull’s launch in Detroit. “My gran used to say, ‘An empty can rattles the loudest.’” He half-smiled his way through the rest, but the implication was clear: in a tight driver and talent market, talking up your next engine isn’t the worst recruiting tool when the current car isn’t doing the selling for you.
If you repeat a line often enough, it starts to sound like fact. Hodgkinson has seen that movie before. “You’ve got to layer it on with the politics. Say it enough and people start searching for reasons it must be true,” he said, stopping just short of naming names.
For Red Bull Powertrains, 2026 is the first true yardstick of the in-house project. Hodgkinson describes the Milton Keynes setup as built with the benefit of hindsight — a chance to better the processes he helped create at Brixworth. “Mercedes is a very competent manufacturer — I know that as well as anyone,” he said. “But we’ve been able to design our approach to be stronger than what came before. I just want to go racing again and let the stopwatch do the talking.”
On the other side of the aisle, Mercedes has been doing its best impression of the world’s calmest swan: very still above the surface, frantic below. Toto Wolff, speaking on Beyond the Grid at the end of last season, batted away the favorites tag with typical bluntness. “Never confident. We’re glass-half-empty people,” he said. “It starts with the enemy in the house. McLaren has been the better team this year with a Mercedes power unit. So even if the PU were to be superior — which we don’t say — you’ve got to beat Williams, McLaren and Alpine first.”
That last part doubles as a reminder: in 2026 Mercedes HPP isn’t just powering the works car, but also McLaren, Williams and Alpine. That’s a lot of potential friendly fire if the unit really is as good as the rumour mill suggests.
Wolff, for his part, thinks the whole conversation is a sideshow. “These rumour mills are dangerous,” he said, joking that somewhere a rival engine partner or fuel supplier is happy to cast Mercedes as the target while quietly sharpening their own knives. “We’re not getting carried away by gossip discussed at the hairdresser.”
Hywel Thomas, managing director at Mercedes HPP, struck the same tone. If there is a magic number on the Brixworth dyno, he’s not the man to leak it. “We never think we’ve got enough power, we never think we’ve got the reliability or the best deployment,” he said. “Quite frankly, I don’t know how much power we’ll bring to the first race — so God knows how the rest of the paddock knows.”
Strip away the spin and here’s what matters. The 2026 ruleset changes where lap time lives. Harvesting and deploying energy smartly — alongside a more heavily restricted combustion engine — will define the pecking order as much as brute power. ERS control, thermal efficiency, and packaging the whole thing in a car that hits its aero targets under the new regulations will separate contenders from pretenders. It’s a multi-variable equation that no one can solve on PowerPoint.
Hodgkinson knows that as well as anyone. His confidence is measured, not chest-thumping, but there’s steel behind it. Red Bull’s power unit project has been built for this moment, staffed with experience and designed to stand alone. Whether the first shot lands is the unknown that’s keeping engine rooms from Brixworth to Milton Keynes to Viry very, very busy.
Until those new-generation cars light up for the first proper mileage, the rumor merchants will keep rattling their cans. And in 2026, for the first time in a long time, the stopwatch might rattle back.
