At this stage, like much of these all-new 2026 regulations, nothing is clear.
From the Mercedes perspective, there are no fair grounds to protest their engine’s legality. They have already been given the green light by the FIA, who they consulted about this idea from the very beginning.
The German team would never pour their resources into an idea that they believed could be banned. Consistent with this reasoning, Toto Wolff’s team completely reject the claims made by other manufacturers.
Mercedes not afraid of standing their ground
According to it.motorsport, Mercedes are happy for escalation if they believe an unfair decision is made. The Chairman of the Mercedes group, Ola Kallenius, is reportedly willing to bring the issue to court if the Mercedes compression ratio is banned.
Of course, this scenario is still precisely that – a hypothetical scenario. Still, these reports are indicative of how strongly Mercedes feel on this issue.
Irrespective of what the team feels internally, presenting a strong front publicly is important in such disputes. The Brackley-based operation is very familiar with how to navigate the politics of F1.
At the beginning of 2022, Toto Wolff had no issue with raising complaints about porpoising and calling for changes – something which Red Bull were unsurprisingly not impressed by.
Still, Wolff’s recent comments leave no room for interpretation about his feelings on this particular matter:
“Get your s*** together,” was his message to rival teams when speaking to the media last week.
“They are just doing secret meetings and sending secret letters. And keep trying to invent ways of testing that just don’t exist.
“I can just say at least from us here, we are trying to minimise distractions.
“Minimising distractions is looking more at us than everybody else – when it’s pretty clear what the regulations say, and also pretty clear what the FIA has said to us.”
