Has Mercedes upset its customer F1 teams?
Several Mercedes customers were surprised by how much performance the works team had in the Australian GP
McLaren’s Andrea Stella says his team feels “on the back foot” for the first time as a Formula 1 engine customer, after being surprised by the advantage Mercedes had in Australia.
Mercedes romped the opening round of the 2026 campaign, with George Russell topping all three qualifying segments to lead a team 1-2 on the grid, before converting that to a commanding victory.
The performance of the Mercedes power unit took the grid by surprise on Saturday in Australia, with Lewis Hamilton re-igniting the engine compression ratio debate.
In the race, Mercedes’ customer McLaren was a distant fourth with Lando Norris, while Alpine was a lap down in 10th and Williams failed to score.
Williams’ James Vowles said on Sunday in Australia: "What Mercedes are doing on the power unit is something that caught us off guard.
“It took qualifying for us to really see just how off the pace we are and have a go at it. That’s probably three tenths of a second, ballpark.”
Power unit gains ‘low hanging fruit’, but teams unsure what that is
McLaren’s Andrea Stella echoed Vowles’ comments, noting that an advantage is not surprising given the work Mercedes and its High Performance Powertrains division have done for this rules cycle.
However, he feels McLaren is “on the back foot” for the first time as a customer.
“Honestly, I can say we spent a lot of time looking at several overlays, even not only with HPP teams, in particular Mercedes, but with other competitors,” he said.
“Definitely, the result of the analysis seemed to direct that we have a lot of work to do in collaboration with our HPP engineers to exploit the potential of the power unit, which once I’ve seen the potential that HPP is extracting, it looks like more is available.
“Now, it’s not obvious how you do that. For us, we are in a journey of knowledge, a journey that is earlier than the works team.
“The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time.
“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 that we should be able to cash in on.
“When it comes to is this all that is available and we are under-exploiting, I’m not sure.
“We will need some more analysis to understand whether it’s parameters that we can control or driver inputs can control, or whether this is something more systemic that a customer cannot control.
“The discussion with HPP about having more information has been going on for weeks, because even in testing we were pretty much going on track, running the car, looking at the data and [saying] ‘oh, that’s what we have’.
“That’s not how you work in Formula 1. Formula 1, what happens in track you simulate, you know what is happening, you know how the car is going to behave.
“So, you also have your plans as to how you evolve it that you have figured out before, because you know what to expect from the car.
“Since we are a customer team, this is the first time we feel we are on the back foot, even when it comes to predicting how the car will behave and how we can improve the car.”
Alpine ‘can’t blame PU’ for Australian GP deficit
Alpine becomes a Mercedes customer for the first time this year.
Team boss Steve Nielsen says he “would have liked a bit more” from Mercedes at the start of the season, but praised the working relationship and doesn’t blame Alpine’s deficit on the power unit.
“I’m not sure I even knew what to expect. It’s the first time we’ve done it, so from a sample of one, I guess we would have liked more.
“All I know is the working relationship with them is very good.
“They’re also learning, I’m sure they’re passing everything as quickly as they can to us and we’re greatly appreciative of it when we get it.
“They’ll learn, we’ll get better. But I can’t lay any blame at the door of the PU.”
Wolff responds to McLaren, Williams comments
Toto Wolff says he hasn't heard any of Mercedes' customers telling it directly that they "don't understand what we are doing", while noting that "you can never deploy things to make everyone happy".
"I think it's clear, when you roll out new regulations, there is so much to learn, whether you have a customer that has your gearbox or suspension," he told Crash.net.
"And it's the same on the power unit, the development slope is always very steep and you can never deploy things to make everyone happy.
"But the most important thing is we are trying to provide a good service and that's always the way. I haven't heard yet that somebody doesn't understand what we are doing."
