Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has questioned whether it has “ambitious enough” targets going into the 2026 Formula 1 season.
The German marque leaves the ground-effect era of F1 with just seven wins across it, having fallen behind rivals Red Bull and McLaren after its supremely dominant period at the start of the V6 hybrid era.
It managed to secure second place in the Constructors’ Championship in 2025 ahead of Red Bull and Ferrari, but wasn’t not able to mount a consistent challenge.
The team is entering 2026 with a status as one of the favourites, largely down to its in-house powertrains department apparently leading the way in early dyno tests.
But the sport’s brand-new technical regulations are bringing a real sense of unknown, making anyone willing to bet on an outcome an extremely brave person indeed.
Wolff is aware of this, and before the final race of the year in Abu Dhabi, he revealed everything is on track for 2026, but wondered whether the bar has been set high enough.
“It is super difficult to predict,” he told media including Motorsport Week. “Because we set ourselves targets that we are on track to meet.
“But whether those targets were set ambitious enough and whether those targets have been set in the right place in terms of priorities, only the future will show.
“And this is not far away. Eight weeks. It is actually awful to say. Today was the first day in the morning where I thought, ‘I don’t want to go to a race track’. So, to be honest, no idea.”
2013-14 F1 transition for Mercedes ‘not comparable’ to 2025-26
This is the first highly significant change in the sport’s regulations since the introduction of V6 hybrids in 2014, which was successfully mastered by Mercedes.
The entirety of the pre-ground-effect era saw the team win all but one Drivers’ Championship, and every Constructors’ Championship.
Asked how the end of 2025 into ’26 compares to the end of 2013 into ’14, Wolff intimated that the two are not quite the same, due to the breadth of competition F1 now has.
“I remember that press conference in Brazil. I was calculating with a pen and a paper of what points we needed to finish second in the championship,” he recounted.
“We ended up winning three races and [finished] P2, and certainly more cheerful than today, considering where we came from.
“And then landing in ’14, I kind of had the feeling already in the winter when we were the first ones running a full car dyno.
“The engine was more reliable than it seemed with the other people. And obviously they went testing, nobody did some laps. We did.
“So, it is not comparable, I would say. The grid is just much more competitive than it was in previous years.”
READ MORE – Why Mercedes feels ‘sorry’ for Lewis Hamilton amid continued F1 struggles at Ferrari
Discussion about this post