The Mercedes high performance powertrains (HPP) division is extremely busy at present. They will be supplying four team with over for 2026, most of whom are now keen for the deliver of their first power unit.
Alpine who were powered by Renault have shifted to the Mercedes stable since the announcement the French company will no longer build F1 power units. McLaren and Williams too are customers of the German brand and all three have contracts which will see them through until 2030.
This week, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff revealed his high level talks with the Daimler-Benz board in Stuttgart. The conversations were around the future of Mercedes HPP and the number of teams they will supply with F1 power.
Optimum number of F1 PU customers is 1-2
Speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Wolff revealed his discussions with Ola Källenius, CEO of there board in Germany included reducing the number of customer teams Mercedes should supply with engines.
“Our current mindset is, also discussing with Ola, that we will reduce the amount of teams we’re going to supply in the next cycle,” said Wolff.
While he stopped short of naming which teams could be affected, Wolff outlined what he believes is the sweet spot for an engine supplier. “The optimum number of teams to power is between two and three, I guess.”
The decision will be made once the future of F1 power beyond the current cycle becomes clear. The current highly complex power units mean the production cycle for Mercedes is lengthy and its designs need to be locked down earlier than say for Honda just supplying Aston Martin.
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Complex regulations will affect Mercedes decision
“It depends on new regulations going forward,” Wolff added. “Are they rather simple or not? What is it we believe we can learn by supplying more [teams] whilst at the same time needing to lock in some designs earlier?” When the 2014 V6 turbo hybrids were introduced the paddock consensus was that having a number of customer teams would serve Mercedes well.
Given there’s no testing allowed in F1 anymore, the data collected from having a number of power units in play in F1, should be an advantage to Mercedes. Yet this optic appears to have now shifted.
Honda will supply just Aston Martin for 2026 and their declared intention is they will produce a finalised version of their power unit at the last possible moment for the FIA to homologate. “We are aiming to submit the homologation in February next year – since we had a slightly late start, we want to push forward until the very last moment,” said Tetsushi Kakuda, the head of HRC’s F1 project.
There is no explanation for Honda’s “late start” given, however the implication is clear. Whilst Aston Martin must have been given the dimensions of the PU some time ago, Honda will continue to refine the internals.
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Mercedes who will provide at least 16 2026 power units to themselves and their customers don’t have the luxury of waiting to the last minute to finalise their powertrain design. Four of them are almost complete already for the late January tests, and another four must be produced and shipped in less than four weeks in case of reliability issues in Barcelona.
Wolff observes Honda’s new partnership with Aston Martin as the example for why Mercedes will in future restrict its engine supply to maybe just two customer teams. “If you’re Honda on your own [it will be] four or five [PU’s they make throughout the season]. So that means longer lead times, more comfortable production cycles.
“So [considering] all of that, going forward, it’s not going to be four anymore,” concluded the Mercedes team boss. Mercedes are widely believed to have developed the best power unit solution for 2026, although this is a herd based assumption made because they delivered the most dominant PU the last time the regulations changed in 2014.
Yet this time there are restrictions over the research and development budgets, along with other resource restrictions Mercedes did not face last time around. Honda joined the party a year later in 2015 and struggled to be competitive before parting with McLaren and forming a new relationship with the Red Bull owned teams in 2018.
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This time around Honda have been involved in the new F1 engine working party since the start of the discussions and given their recent sic F1 championships, will be a force to be reckoned with.
Red Bull whilst building their first ever in house F1 powertrain, have the massive resources from Ford available to them behind the scenes.
The only real insight into how any team has fared with their 2026 PU design came from a number of ex-Renault powertrain engineers who left for Ferrari. fomrula.it reported last month that they were disappointed with the progress of the Scuderia when they arrived from the now defunct facility at Viry-Chatillon.
The insider report claimed the former Renault engineers believe their preliminary Renault engine performed better than the current one close to completion at Ferrari.
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Ferrari to lose 2 key PU engineers to Audi
Following the Italian Grand Prix in Monza, Italian media outlets were reporting Ferrari were set to lose two key figures from their powertrain engineering team. Wolff Zimmermann and Lars Schmidt will depart the Scuderia according to Autoracer and Corriere dello Sport, with their destination said to be in Germany with the Audi F1 powertrain programme.
Zimmermann, Ferrari’s Power Unit project leader, is widely credited as a real innovator in the arena of F1 engines and he and Schmidt will renew their relationship with their former head of F1 power in Maranello, Mattia Binotto, who now heads up the Audi F1 project.
Schmidt was the lead engineer for performance development of the internal combustion engine and in particular is expected to be a big loss for the Scuderia.
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Vasseur apologises already for poor 2026 campaign start
Team boss Fred Vasseur recently commented on how he believed the 2026 season would unfold and appeared to deliver an early apologetic as to how Ferrari would perform early season. “I think the most important thing is not to waste time trying to figure out if the others are ahead or behind. We will only find out in Barcelona, or more likely in Australia.
“Another point to consider is that next year the hierarchies will not be defined from Melbourne. Development and the ability to grow quickly will be extremely important. After Melbourne, the season will certainly not be over, no matter where we are. It will be a long road for everyone,” the Frenchman asserted.
Ferrari will supply two customer teams in 2026, continuing their relationship with Haas F1 and adding the new Cadillac team to their portfolio.
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On a circuit where both McLaren and Red Bull cars were expected to dominate, the 12 point deficit between the Dutch driver and Lando Norris proved impossible for the four times champion to overcome.
Whilst a season’s final results are never based on one moment alone, the mistake by Kimi Antonelli in the penultimate round of the year at the time felt divisive. Following McLaren’s huge strategy blunder Norris found himself in fifth place entering the final lap of the Qatar Grand Prix, but his pass on the Mercedes driver gave him the two points he ultimately required to claim the 2025 drivers’ title….. READ MORE
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