McLaren wants closer Mercedes HPP ties as PU information talks continue

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella admits that his team has work to do in exploiting the Mercedes power unit to the level which the works team can.

Stella suggested a lack of information coming from Mercedes High Performance Powertrains, with talks “going on for weeks” over this issue which Stella claims impacted McLaren’s testing, as just taking to the track blind and reacting to data is “not how you work in Formula 1.” Stella says this is the first time that McLaren has felt on the “back foot” as a Mercedes engine customer.

McLaren ‘on the back foot’ over Mercedes power unit exploitation

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Mercedes blew away the competition over one lap in Melbourne. George Russell claimed pole from teammate Kimi Antonelli. Red Bull’s Isack Hadjar was the highest non-Mercedes qualifier in third, eight-tenths off Russell’s pace.

Mercedes turned its front-row lockout into a one-two on Sunday.

“What Mercedes are doing on a power unit is something that caught us off guard,” admitted James Vowles, team principal of Williams, which like Mercedes, McLaren and Alpine, also uses the new engine created by Mercedes High Performance Powertrains.

Remaining in conversation with PlanetF1.com and others, Vowles added: “So I’m confident that Mercedes, what they have provided us is the ability to do what they are doing.

“I don’t know how to do that right now, as I talk to you today, and that’s what we’re working through in the background right now. What have we missed, and how do we get there fast.

“Mercedes are incredibly fair to customer teams. I state this already. We have everything that they have access to. They have just been cleverer than we have, and it’s our job to get on top of it.”

Vowles is, though, “a little bit shocked” by how much extra Mercedes is finding. He was therefore asked how much of an open door that is, in terms of the Mercedes works team offering any insight.

“It is not an open door, as you would imagine,” he confirmed, “because that’s where the performance is found. So it is down to us to try and work around it.

“I would say we have to acknowledge we, as Williams, do not have the sophistication that they have, a level of tech properties, and definitely, that’s on us, that’s not on them.

“I would say the converse is that there’s some inherent knowledge they have, which we don’t.”

McLaren boss Stella was quizzed on what Vowles had said, when he spoke with PlanetF1.com and others after the Australian Grand Prix.

Reigning World Champion Lando Norris was the sole McLaren driver to see the chequered flag, after Oscar Piastri crashed on his lap to the grid.

Norris ended the race 51 seconds behind victor Russell, who crossed the line ahead of teammate Antonelli.

Ferrari came home third and fourth, Charles Leclerc ahead of Lewis Hamilton.

“I think, in fairness, the gap today was, if anything, similar to what we saw yesterday in qualifying,” said Stella.

“There’s performance that needs to come from two main areas. One is the power unit exploitation, and one is having more grip in the corners.

“And in a way, today, I think it was exactly the same. Still, we remain a little puzzled by the difference we see in the data between the speed of our car, and the speed of other cars using the same power unit.

“It clearly indicates that we should be doing a better job in understanding how to utilise the power unit with the complexities that came with the 2026 regulations.

“So definitely work to do.

“And at the same time, when we look at the GPS overlays, we see that Mercedes is faster in some of the corners.

“Therefore, like I said, we have clear objectives and priorities.

“We need to find a way to extract more out of the power unit, and, on the other side, develop the car. This will take a few races in terms of seeing some major upgrades that can allow us to change a bit the category for which we compete.

“Therefore, I think in these few initial races, we will have to make sure that we extract most of the car in its current configuration.

“But definitely work ahead of us, and the gap at the moment seems to be in the range between half a second and one second.”

The regulations dictate that a power unit manufacturer must supply the same version to all its teams.

Mercedes HPP boss Hywel Thomas did though suggest ahead of Melbourne that the Mercedes works team is at a natural advantage, as the team which will be most listened to by HPP in regards to its wishes.

Stella wants closer collaboration for his team, the reigning double champions McLaren, with Mercedes HPP.

“I can say that we spent a lot of time looking at several overlays, not only, obviously, with HPP teams, in particular Mercedes, but also to other competitors. And definitely, like I said before, the result of this analysis seem to direct to the fact that we have work to do as a team in collaboration with our HPP engineers.

“We have work to do to exploit the potential of the power unit, which, once I see the potential that HPP is extracting, looks like there’s more that is available.

“Now, it’s not obvious how you do that. For us, we are in a journey of knowledge. Certainly, a journey that is earlier than their works team.

“The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time. So they will have collaborated, talked about how to use the power unit. That’s fair enough. But, we will definitely intensify the collaboration with HPP, because our understanding is that there is some low hanging fruit.

“When it comes to, is this all that is available, and that we are under-exploiting, I am not sure.

“I think we will need some more analysis to understand whether this is only about parameters that we can control, or driver’s input that we can control, or some other factors, more systemic, that not necessarily a customer team can control.”

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McLaren has run as a customer team since 2018, and as a Mercedes customer since 2021.

Stella said that McLaren has never felt at a disadvantage due to that status, until now.

“The discussion with HPP about having more information has been going on for weeks,” he revealed, “because even in testing, we were pretty much going on track, run the car, look at the data, ‘Oh, that’s what we have. Good. Now we react to what we have.’ That’s not how you work in Formula 1.

“Formula 1, what happens, on track, you simulate. You know what is happening. You know what you’re programming. You know how the car is going to behave. Okay. So you also have your plans as to how you evolve it that you have figured out before, because you know what you are expecting from the car.

“So I have to say, since we are a customer team, this is the first time that we feel we are on the back foot. Even when it comes to the ability to predict how the car will behave and the ability to anticipate how we can improve the car.

“There’s one more factor, though, and this is perhaps for you useful to understand what kind of Formula 1 we are experiencing.

“Everything is very sensitive. Why the tools are important, because you may change the amount of lift and coast before corner one, and this affects the deployment through the entire lap, which is also what puts off the drivers when they have to optimise the driving the battery, because this is now a fundamental way of driving in Formula 1.

“Now, you’re driving the battery.

“So when everything is so sensitive, the reliance on the tools is even more important.

“Like with last year, where everything was calmer in terms of power unit behaviour and electrical energy deployment, we had the tools, but we weren’t so reliant on the tools. But now, it’s pretty much all about the tools, because changing a detail in one place affects something much bigger in a very far away place of the circuit, which is just difficult to predict.”

Round 2 of the season takes place this weekend in Shanghai. That will be the first Sprint weekend of F1 2026.

Additional reporting by Mat Coch

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