How Mercedes feel about having early F1 2026 favourites tag

Mercedes insist they are “not getting carried away” with being handed the early favourites tag for the 2026 F1 season.

New power unit and aerodynamic regulations will be brought in to F1 next season, which could lead to a major shake-up on the grid.

Mercedes aced the previous rules cycle in 2014 when V6 hybrid era engines were introduced and went on to win an unprecedented eight consecutive constructors’ championships, as well as seven drivers’ titles.

Whispers in the F1 paddock are already pitching Mercedes as the team to beat before a wheel has even been turned ahead of next season.

“Never confident,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff told F1’s Beyond The Grid Podcast when asked how he reacts to being labelled the pre-season favourites. “We are glass half-empty people never half-full.

“It starts with the enemy in the house. McLaren has been the better team this year with a Mercedes power unit, so if the power unit were to be superior, which we never feel entitled to say, then you have got to beat Williams, McLaren and Alpine.

“As a matter of fact, some of them will have had more development time in the wind tunnel because they’ve not been placed very well in the constructors’ championship. Some will come with innovation that maybe we haven’t spotted, etc, etc.

“So you cannot take anything for granted, even if the Mercedes power unit was the strongest. On top of that, these rumour mills are always dangerous because someone, somewhere in another team, or another power unit manufacturer, or fuel supplier, will think ‘well we like to position you guys in a favourite role, but we are coming’.

“That’s why we are not getting carried away by any gossip that’s being discussed at the hairdressers.”

Could one team steal a march on the others?

Given the scale of the regulation overhaul, there are suggestions that one team could steal a march on the rest and enjoy a large competitive advantage.

F1’s 2026 rules have been written in a way to try and prevent this from happening, though that doesn’t mean a team won’t manage to find a clever loophole and exploit a grey area.

“Always possible, definitely always possible,” Mercedes High Performance Powertrains chief Hywel Thomas said.

“Although the regulation set was put together very much in a way to try and avoid that, so there are some constraints on there that do constrain you to certain ways of doing things.

“If that’s gone well, less likely that someone is going to have stolen a march. But whose to say someone hasn’t found a loophole, hasn’t found an amazing thing that nobody has.”

Asked how Mercedes are feeling on the eve of the new rule cycle, Thomas added: “There hasn’t been a season, where in December we haven’t been thinking ‘we haven’t got enough power, we haven’t got enough reliability, and the way that we interact everything isn’t good enough and we’ve got three months to fix it all.

“Perhaps this season [2025] was the first season I didn’t feel like that, with the current PU. But there’s generally always been something that catches you out, right at the last minute.”

Mercedes are in a unique position where they will be supplying three customer teams in 2026; McLaren, Williams and Alpine.

Thomas admitted that whether supplying four teams is more beneficial than just one - like in the case of Honda who will power only Aston Martin - remains the “million dollar question”.

“I think, as we’ve shown in the past, having more than one team, you are getting more data, you are getting more information, you are getting more kilometres,” he explained.

“You’ve got all those cars, you’ve got four times as many engineers, all sitting around telling you ‘you can do this better, you can do this more this way’. That is very, very beneficial to have all that coming at you. It doesn’t always feel like it, but it definitely is in terms of making a great product.

“But the flip of that is we have got to make a lot of hardware and we’ve got to make a few decisions earlier. I’m not sure making those decisions earlier really hurts you sometimes, because you can run things a bit too close to the wind I think. But that is the flip.

“I’m not even sure if the right place is one teams, two teams, three teams, four teams. There’s definitely a sweet spot in there somewhere, and I think it’s probably nearer four than one.”