2026 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

[WardenOfTheNorth]

60hp now is it??

[Lasssept]

We are the second force in China this weekend. The 60 hp PU offset will be cancelled by the “Macarena” RW and Ferrari’s World Class Chassis. They built a car for combat.

[hollus]

60 hp? No, I think I heard 60 kW.
Actually, 60 kW is 80 HP, so it is probably 80 kW.

[SB15]

We are the second force in China this weekend. The 60 hp PU offset will be cancelled by the “Macarena” RW and Ferrari’s World Class Chassis. They built a car for combat.

Mercedes has their trusted friend this weekend, Cold Weather :

[upsidedowntoast]

Does anyone know why George took some new components already?

No one has any idea, but here's some gossip I heard so take it with a bag of salt.

Basically, once you take your new engine or battery or whatever, it's yours and you can keep using it for the rest of the year. And you can swap it in and out with whatever you like.

So it's possible Mercedes have decided to grab both battery/engine allocations now and swap them in/out all year.

By the way if you go over your engine allocation and take a third one (with the associated grid drop penalty) you once again can keep using that engine for the rest of the season or any of the prior two that you've already taken, whenever you want. Teams have strategically taken the third engine allocation on weekends where they've qualified poorly so that the penalty won't affect them as much anyway.

Well Kimi didn't do it so it seems unlikely to be strategic.

I thought Kimi did take a bunch of PU-related parts too? Can't remember if it was a battery or something else but I could have sworn I saw him in the FIA docs for batteries or something.

[aberracus]

maybe they are expecting to have to redesign something, so they wan to have a pool of parts with the "old" specification; or maybe the PU in "superior" configuration is not very reliable? Williams have to change some parts it appears, so this can override this argument?, or maybe Williams as it appears are a little incompetent.

[Badger]

No one has any idea, but here's some gossip I heard so take it with a bag of salt.

Basically, once you take your new engine or battery or whatever, it's yours and you can keep using it for the rest of the year. And you can swap it in and out with whatever you like.

So it's possible Mercedes have decided to grab both battery/engine allocations now and swap them in/out all year.

By the way if you go over your engine allocation and take a third one (with the associated grid drop penalty) you once again can keep using that engine for the rest of the season or any of the prior two that you've already taken, whenever you want. Teams have strategically taken the third engine allocation on weekends where they've qualified poorly so that the penalty won't affect them as much anyway.

Well Kimi didn't do it so it seems unlikely to be strategic.

I thought Kimi did take a bunch of PU-related parts too? Can't remember if it was a battery or something else but I could have sworn I saw him in the FIA docs for batteries or something.

Just ancillary PU parts I believe, likely related to his crash.

[OverheatedTurbo]

We are the second force in China this weekend. The 60 hp PU offset will be cancelled by the “Macarena” RW and Ferrari’s World Class Chassis. They built a car for combat.

Mercedes has their trusted friend this weekend, Cold Weather :

The Mercedes Enviromental buff. We should be able to match Ferrari’s blistering chassis now that the temps will be cold.

[upsidedowntoast]

anyone know why historically Merc have struggled in hot weather?

[WardenOfTheNorth]

anyone know why historically Merc have struggled in hot weather?

Every team makes a decision around tyre management and warm up.

If a team has designed a car with quick warm up, then they are potentially at risk from higher deg in hotter races. However they will benefit in cooler ones and in quali.

Conversely, if a team prioritises tyre wear, they may struggle with warm up, particularly in cooler races.

I always assumed that Mercedes fell into the former camp.

Of course that's simplifying things and, as always in F1, we're talking fine margins.

During the ground effect era this was probably exaggerated as well by the narrow set up windows of the cars.

[Lasssept]

[CjC]

George always mentions McLaren….

[nitrotech]

George always mentions McLaren….

Yeah, it's actually illegal to mention other teams as per 2026 regulations. He even mentioned about Max, I think that's ok as he was talking about a driver. But I am not too sure though.

[CjC]

George always mentions McLaren….

Yeah, it's actually illegal to mention other teams as per 2026 regulations. He even mentioned about Max, I think that's ok as he was talking about a driver. But I am not too sure though.

If it’s illegal then why has he said it then?

You know, if you don’t want to heed his concerns about a particular team that’s fine but the rest of us can discuss it.

[upsidedowntoast]

George always mentions McLaren….

Yeah, it's actually illegal to mention other teams as per 2026 regulations. He even mentioned about Max, I think that's ok as he was talking about a driver. But I am not too sure though.

If it’s illegal then why has he said it then?

You know, if you don’t want to heed his concerns about a particular team that’s fine but the rest of us can discuss it.

The joke ---->
you