2026 Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

[MB_Racer]

It is literally not even the second race yet, chill. Everyone thought Ferrari would run away with it at the start of 2022 as well. In-season development is a thing.

When’s the last time Ferrari out-developed anyone in-season?

2012 they out developed Mercedes at least …but not McLaren MB nor Red Bull…

[MB_Racer]

https://i.postimg.cc/MGYSwP7C/20260315-120919.jpg

Absolutely brilliant result!

Well deserved win for Kimi ANTONELLI and perfect weekend for Mercedes F1 team. We are back

and so great to see Sir LH back also, this podium couldn’t be much better !

[upsidedowntoast]

George stepping out of the way for the Lewis/Kimi/Bono podium was really sweet

[upsidedowntoast]

People that kept criticizing George for not having skills to manage tyres in the ground effect era, should look at Max today and stop the non-sensical debate. The car is everything. If the car is good, even a new bee like Kimi can have great tyre management skills and if it's bad, a multiple WDC can look like a noob. This is technical forum and when the skills are debated, it should have technical reasoning behind them, instead of irrational arguments.

It seems like George did some changes post Sprint race that affected his quali and race pace. In quali, he was 7 tenths off from his Sprint quali pace whereas Kimi was just 2 tenths off. Ferraris were off by around 3 to 4 tenths on the same. That setup change affected George's tyre warmup which is why he struggled after Safe car where he lost 2 places to Ferraris and struggled to get the temps up.

This 100%. The GE Merc was highly inconsistent and had a very narrow operating window. A bit of bad luck and you're stuck in traffic? Bam, your tyres fall off a cliff.

I do wonder why/how they changed the setup on George's car in between the sprint and GP (compared to Kimi's car which seemed to fare better even without accounting for George's bad luck in qualifying). You'd think they'd minimize the changes or keep them in parallel given how well both cars did in the sprint.

[zibby43]

It is literally not even the second race yet, chill. Everyone thought Ferrari would run away with it at the start of 2022 as well. In-season development is a thing.

When’s the last time Ferrari out-developed anyone in-season?

2012 they out developed Mercedes at least …but not McLaren MB nor Red Bull…

Touche.

[Sevach]

It is literally not even the second race yet, chill. Everyone thought Ferrari would run away with it at the start of 2022 as well. In-season development is a thing.

Verstappen beat Ferrari at race 2, and gave it a good challenge in race 1.
He just had reliability issues(later Ferrari would get hit super hard by reliability) in races 1 and 3.

Also that was chassis/aero development, this time it's PU and eletronics, it's a slower proccess.
Just look how long Mercedes carried their 2014 advantage.

[zibby43]

It is literally not even the second race yet, chill. Everyone thought Ferrari would run away with it at the start of 2022 as well. In-season development is a thing.

Verstappen beat Ferrari at race 2, and gave it a good challenge in race 1.
He just had reliability issues(later Ferrari would get hit super hard by reliability) in races 1 and 3.

Also that was chassis/aero development, this time it's PU and eletronics, it's a slower proccess.
Just look how long Mercedes carried their 2014 advantage.

Agree - they’re not apples to apples comparisons. The PUs had been converging for 8-9 years at that point. How these PUs operate in this era touches every engineering choice elsewhere in the car - which is why constructors have shown such a sizable advantage over customer teams.

Optimization is not the work of a moment and 1) we don’t know how much Merc has in hand and 2) it seems like most development arguments assume Merc can’t continue to unlock/optimize their package further.

[Sevach]

Agree - they’re not apples to apples comparisons. The PUs had been converging for 8-9 years at that point. How these PUs operate in this era touches every engineering choice elsewhere in the car - which is why constructors have shown such a sizable advantage over customer teams.

Optimization is not the work of a moment and 1) we don’t know how much Merc has in hand and 2) it seems like most development arguments assume Merc can’t continue to unlock/optimize their package further.

In the (old)V6 era although Mercedes came out of the gate way ahead of everyone, they still had plenty of room to develop, even Ferrari that isn't so bad needs to find something that will give them a serious bump in HP.
They need to understand why Mercedes is so much stronger and reverse engineer it(has the speculation started? I mean besides the compression thing).

When it comes to aero teams largely converged into one concept midway through the second season and Red Bull hit a wall in the 3rd.

[Brahmal]

Merc also didn't have cost caps and testing regulations to contend with in 2014. If competitors can make the ADUO process work, it will be difficult for them to maintain this advantage for multiple seasons. Or even one season, as these race cancellations are going to cost Mercedes points while they are at their strongest. <…>

[basti313]

In the (old)V6 era although Mercedes came out of the gate way ahead of everyone, they still had plenty of room to develop, even Ferrari that isn't so bad needs to find something that will give them a serious bump in HP.

Well...in the end two major changes in the rules led to the converge in the (old)V6 aera:
- Everything went into a aero formula again by cutting the floors in 21 and then the ground effect.
- In the end the biggest converge came from the E10 introduction. That allowed Honda to finally catch up.

Without rule changes and without fuel flow tricks, no one would have caught up to Mercedes with the old V6...
The question now is if the CR clampdown is the same issue or just a paper tiger.

They need to understand why Mercedes is so much stronger and reverse engineer it(has the speculation started? I mean besides the compression thing).

Well, the turbo sizing and CR are the only smoking guns at the moment. Energy recovery is more something that keeps McLaren behind, I doubt that Ferrari is worse than Merc on simulating this.

When it comes to aero teams largely converged into one concept midway through the second season and Red Bull hit a wall in the 3rd.

I fear that aero does not play a big role in what we see today and Merc can only win on this. If you see that Merc gains like 6 tenths on one straight...the room to develop aero is actually on the Merc, not on the Ferrari.

[HungarianRacer]

I fear that aero does not play a big role in what we see today and Merc can only win on this. If you see that Merc gains like 6 tenths on one straight...the room to develop aero is actually on the Merc, not on the Ferrari.

I don't get how it logically follows that if the Mercedes cars are massively faster on the straights while matching the Ferraris in the corners that means they'll also have more room to develop the aero(?) Why are we automatically granting Ferrari the same aero efficiency with no evidence (since we can't infer inherent drag levels of chassis from top speeds anymore)?

... Oh, are we still going with the "Ferrari gains >6 tenths every lap in the slow corners" myth, even though we've seen the Mercs having no problem sticking to the Ferraris' gearboxes when they needed to in both the sprint and main race? (and plenty of telemetry data posted on this and other threads disproving it)?... I guess if it's just repeated enough times.....

[Sevach]

Merc also didn't have cost caps and testing regulations to contend with in 2014. If competitors can make the ADUO process work, it will be difficult for them to maintain this advantage for multiple seasons. Or even one season, as these race cancellations are going to cost Mercedes points while they are at their strongest. <…>

Yes, rules are setup for a team not to keep it's huge advantage forever.
Let's see how much it shorter the dominance will be.

I also think Ferrari is starting a bit closer than 2014.

Well, the turbo sizing and CR are the only smoking guns at the moment. Energy recovery is more something that keeps McLaren behind, I doubt that Ferrari is worse than Merc on simulating this.

I heard a thing(on twitter) about Mercedes combustion, but it sounded highly speculative, and mostly BS.
Let's wait for the compression thingy.

I fear that aero does not play a big role in what we see today and Merc can only win on this. If you see that Merc gains like 6 tenths on one straight...the room to develop aero is actually on the Merc, not on the Ferrari.

I agree with you, i was just comparing how much less time it took to bridge an aero gap vs an engine gap.

Lastly a nice comparison between Ferrari and Merc on a hotlap.

[basti313]

I fear that aero does not play a big role in what we see today and Merc can only win on this. If you see that Merc gains like 6 tenths on one straight...the room to develop aero is actually on the Merc, not on the Ferrari.

I don't get how it logically follows that if the Mercedes cars are massively faster on the straights while matching the Ferraris in the corners that means they'll also have more room to develop the aero(?)

Well...that is more hope than logic. Seeing how Ferrari did in Oz, I think there might be more on the low speed side towards Ferrari. That may give some excitement on tracks like Monaco.
Plus if you are ahead on the power, there is more room to play with things like cooling and how you use the tires.

[Lasssept]