Mercedes rule out Brawn GP-style march and downplay favourite tag

Ahead of Formula 1’s biggest reset ever, Mercedes has ruled out gaining either a Brawn GP-style advantage over its rivals on the technical front or an engine march such as it scored in 2014 – or worryingly for rivals, both.

Mercedes heads into the F1 2026 season widely tipped by rivals to be the team to beat, that based largely on yesteryear’s results.

Mercedes: Rivals learned to make sure they avoid it

Under the Brawn GP guise in 2009, Brawn’s one and only season on the grid before the team was sold to Mercedes, it dominated the early part of the season with its double-diffuser and Jenson Button won six of the opening seven races to take a 26-point lead in the standings.

Although he didn’t win another race that season, Button’s lead was enough to ensure he won the title even when Brawn’s rivals adopted their own double-diffusers and caught up on the track. Brawn also won the Constructors’ title.

Formula 1’s next big change related to the engines when the sport introduced turbocharged V6 power units in 2014. So began the Mercedes era with the Brackley squad’s power unit far superior to its rivals, which played a role in the team’s run of seven successive Drivers’ titles and eight Constructors’.

Although Mercedes lost its on-track advantage in the ground-effect era from 2022 to 2025, next year’s all-new cars will use active aerodynamics, erasing Mercedes’ Achilles heel. They’ll also run on a new engine formula.

It has rivals and pundits declaring Mercedes, with George Russell and F1 2025 rookie of the season Kimi Antonelli behind the wheel, could be the team to beat over and above reigning champions McLaren.

Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has downplayed this.

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“I mean, we’re not… everyone else is saying we’re well prepared, but it is not coming from Mercedes,” Shovlin told a group of select media, including Planet1.com, in Abu Dhabi.

“We had great success when we got a jump on everyone in 2009 when the team was Brawn, and in 2014, we got the jump on everyone, but teams learn not to let that happen.

“In some ways, they allowed us to get ahead by we switched development early, we started the power unit incredibly early for the V6 era, and people get wise to that.

“Having teams who suffered through those regulations, they learn to make sure they avoid it.

“So, how well prepared are we? Eight weeks feels awfully short for the [2026 cars] to hit the track. There is not a lot of car if you came to Brackley now to show you, there is a huge amount of work to do.

“But our mentality is that we’re always behind and fighting to get to the front.”

Mercedes has yet to announce when it will launch its 2026 car, the W17, but it will be on track in late January for a behind-closed-door test with its rivals.

The teams will be in action in three separate outings, the first taking place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya from January 26-30. The second, which will be open to the public and media, will be hosted by the Bahrain International Circuit from February 11-13 with the third from the 18-20 February.

After that, the 11 teams will head to Melbourne for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

“There is a lot of work left to do,” admitted Shovlin. “It is a bit less scary than it was perhaps a month ago, but you’re always conscious that everyone has got the same resources these days.

“The cost cap has meant you just can’t bludgeon your way through to success with more cash than anyone else, and teams down the grid have got more wind-tunnel time than we’ve got, so that puts you on the back-foot.

“There is an awful lot of that have put a great deal of effort into next year, and a few [teams] who seem to be developing late on, but there is no shortage of teams that have done very little work on the current cars. It is important that you start regulations on the front-foot.

“We can see a pathway through to getting something sensible on track in Barcelona, but there are an awful lot of things that will be challenging next year…

“The cars have never changed so comprehensively across a regulation set, even the ECU change is pretty significant in terms of how challenging it is to manage and how much there is to learn.

“We’ll keep working at it, and whenever we have made championship-winning cars, we never thought we went into a year thinking we had a championship-winning car.

“You’re better to think someone else will have one, and you’re playing catch-up, and that mindset is what delivered success when we had it.”

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