Explained: Why McLaren is the last team waiting for Mercedes’ latest F1 engine
McLaren is the only Mercedes customer team yet to receive its latest F1 power unit.
The McLaren Formula 1 team is still waiting on Mercedes’ latest power unit upgrade, CEO Zak Brown has revealed.
Mercedes debuted its latest specification engine on works drivers George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s cars at the Austrian Grand Prix last time out.
The new power unit does not feature any performance-related upgrades but does have modified batteries in a bid to improve reliability after a series of recent failures.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff hinted in Austria that the latest engine has “a little bit more spiciness”.
These have started to be rolled out to Mercedes’ customer teams, with Williams and Alpine receiving the updated power unit at Silverstone.
Unlike the other customer teams, McLaren has not moved onto the latest specification Mercedes V6.
“We need to get the current Mercedes engine,” Brown told media including Crash.net on Friday at the British Grand Prix.
“We’re the only one without the new engine, which will be coming for us shortly.”
Asked if McLaren is frustrated not to be running the latest Mercedes power unit, Brown replied: “Of course we’d like to have it.
“Any time you have performance that you know is coming but you don’t have it on your car yet, you want to get it as quickly as possible.
“But I wouldn’t say it’s a frustration. It just is what it is and we just keep our head down and keep pushing hard and it’ll be in the back in not too long.”
Brown explained that there is still life left in the engines McLaren is currently using, meaning there is no need to swap right now.
“You’ve got to cycle through your engines and we’ve got life left on our current engines, so we need to wait till we do an engine change,” he said.
“Williams got theirs because Carlos [Sainz] had his issues. He needed an engine change. I don’t recall exactly the scenario but I think you’ve got two of them. So, it’s just a timing sequence.”
The reigning world champion squad is yet to win a race in 2026, with Mercedes taking seven victories and Ferrari scoring the only non-Mercedes grand prix win so far this season.
Nevertheless, Brown is confident McLaren will catch its rivals with planned developments in the pipeline.
“We have some work to do,” he admitted. “We will catch up. I think we’ll be winning races this year, so quite optimistic for the future.”
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