Mercedes has a clear advantage over the customer teams, despite all cars running with the same engine. This is what Bernie Collins, former Aston Martin engineer and Sky Sports analyst, claims.
Mercedes has managed to create an alleged engine advantage for itself for 2026 thanks to a loophole surrounding the compression ratio. According to the rules, the ratio should be 1:16 at room temperature, but nothing is said about the operating temperature.
According to insiders, Mercedes has developed the engine in such a way that the compression ratio is around 1:18 when the engine is running at full speed, which should produce about fifteen extra horsepower, equivalent to 0.3 seconds on the Albert Park Street Circuit, where the first race of the season will be held on March 8.
Good news for Mercedes, but also for McLaren, Williams and Alpine, which also purchase a power source from Mercedes Powertrains.
Yet Collins believes the Mercedes will be strongest in 2026, as the Brackley team has the advantage of being able to design the engine and chassis together to optimize the overall package, while the customer teams have had to wait until the engine was completed before starting that process.
“When designing engines, every team – customer or factory – needs the same hardware and software,” Collins starts at Sky F1.
“So if Mercedes produces five engines, in theory the engines for Mercedes should be exactly the same as those for McLaren.”
“The factory team has an advantage if it has a certain design philosophy. For example, if for some reason they want to put the oil radiator on the right side of the car.”
“Then they will work more closely on the integration of the engine, how the pipes are placed around the engine, where the oil sump is located – whatever the required elements are.”
“So these are things that may seem insignificant from the outside, but the more you can integrate your chassis design with the engine design, the lighter the overall package will be.”
Collins goes on to talk about what it’s like to be a customer team for an engine supplier and emphasizes that building an engine can bring significant benefits.
“When I was at McLaren in 2012-2013, our engine was supplied by Mercedes. At the beginning of the year, Mercedes sent you a CAD model of their engine, and you fed that into your CAD program to build around that, making sure that everything you designed on the car matched the engine model you were given.”
“But the problem with the customer relationship is that you might get that engine model once a week or once every two weeks, while it’s being updated live for the factory team.”
“It may have improved over the years, but there have been many cases where you were working with an old version of the engine model and then a new version came along and suddenly something didn’t fit anymore. That can slow down the whole design process on the chassis side.”
Worth a look
