Wolff shrugs off ‘favourites’ tag as Mercedes plays down 2026 PU hype
If there’s one thing Toto Wolff is allergic to, it’s being labelled a favourite a year out from a regulation reset. The Mercedes boss has pushed back on paddock chatter that Brixworth’s next-gen power unit will set the tone for 2026, insisting the team’s posture is closer to cautious than cocky.
“Never confident. We are glass-half-empty people,” Wolff said on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, swatting away suggestions Mercedes High Performance Powertrains has stolen a march. “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 never say — then you’ve got to beat Williams, you’ve got to beat McLaren, and you’ve got to beat Alpine.”
That last part matters. In 2026, Mercedes won’t just power its own factory squad from Brackley — the Brixworth-built unit will also sit in the back of McLaren, Williams and Alpine. If the early gossip proves right, the silver star could be on both ends of the knife fight.
The new regulations will push F1 into a 50/50 split between the internal combustion engine and electrical deployment, on fully sustainable fuels, while active aero steps in to protect lap time as drag and downforce get rebalanced. After the long engine freeze, the sport’s five manufacturers have been flat-out on dynos and simulators to make those numbers add up. The first collective running arrives late January at a five-day, closed-doors Barcelona test, with two more pre-season hits slated for Bahrain.
The obvious question: can anyone land a 2014-style haymaker? The FIA has already built in additional development and upgrade opportunities to help any stragglers catch up, but there’s always room for someone to ace the brief early.
Hywel Thomas, the softly-spoken head of Mercedes HPP, has heard the whispers too — and laughed them off. “Quite frankly, I don’t know how much power we’re going to get to the first race, so God knows how the rest of the paddock knows what we’re getting there!”
Thomas is a veteran of the last big reset, when Mercedes introduced the hybrid V6 with brutal effect. He remembers the nerves then, and says the feeling is eerily familiar now — the nagging sense it’s never quite enough. “We never think we’ve got enough power, we never think we’ve got reliability, and we never think we’re the best at putting that down on the track. If you always think you’re a bit behind and you’re always pushing to get that extra bit, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”
He’s confident the run-up is sufficient to shake out gremlins: Barcelona to debug the systems and integration, then Bahrain twice to refine. And make no mistake, integration is going to be the word of 2026.
Where will the lap time live? Thomas breaks it into three buckets:
– Crank power. Old-school horsepower still counts.
– Electrical efficiency. The better you harvest and deploy, the longer you can run the extra shove.
– The glue. How the ICE and hybrid blend, how the software manages energy transiently, and how all of it talks to the car and the driver.
That last piece could redefine racecraft. With higher electrical demands and energy limits, drivers won’t be able to light up every straight. They’ll have to choose their moments — defend here, attack there — and teams will write new playbooks around energy strategy. “The driver is going to be able to do one straight incredibly quickly if they really want to, but they’ll be knackered for the rest of the lap,” Thomas said. “So that strategic element — where you use all of this — is a big part of it.”
This reset isn’t 2014-level moonshot engineering; many components now exist in other industries even if F1 needs them smaller, lighter, tougher. But don’t mistake “not revolutionary” for simple. The regs are designed to constrain runaway solutions, yet the door’s not locked to clever thinking. “Who’s to say someone hasn’t found a loophole, hasn’t found the amazing thing that nobody else has?” Thomas added.
Wolff, meanwhile, has no appetite for victory laps in January. He knows how quickly a narrative can age. “These rumour mills are dangerous,” he said. “Someone, somewhere will like to position you as the favourite. We’re not being carried away by any gossip that’s been discussed at the hairdresser.”
Worth noting: if Mercedes does show up with the sharpest PU, there’s no hiding place. McLaren — the reigning Constructors’ champions — would be carrying the same heart, as would Williams and Alpine. The performance benchmark would be right there in the sister cars. And because of the cost cap on power units, it’s not as if anyone can outspend their way out of trouble.
So, are Mercedes the favourites? On paper, history and resources say they could be. In practice, the only thing anyone at Brackley or Brixworth is willing to admit is that the checklist is long, the margins are thin, and the stopwatch won’t care about rumours.
The first laps in Barcelona will tell us more than the gossip ever could. Until then, believe the tone from Mercedes: cautious, a little spiky, and very much on-task.
