Heading into this weekend’s Australian GP, there was renewed optimism that Ferrari could rebound from a difficult 2025. By extension, the paddock consensus was that Lewis Hamilton is more comfortable in this year’s SF-26 than its predecessor.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, their promising pace in testing and Free Practice has been completely nullified by the Mercedes W18 – which finally showed its true performance in qualifying.
Even in normal circumstances, teams have an incentive to turn down their engine and hide their pace in pre-season.
However, with Mercedes under intense scrutiny for their compression ratio, Toto Wolff’s squad had extra motivation to go under the radar and minimise their power unit’s strength.
In light of this, Lewis Hamilton wants clarity on the cause of the Silver Arrows’ engine advantage.
Hamilton not surprised by Mercedes engine supremacy
It was slightly over a decade ago that Hamilton arrived in Australia for the 2014 season. This would mark the beginning of his dominant years with Mercedes, where he would claim six out of his seven world titles.
At the time, it was also a vastly superior engine that helped separate Mercedes to start the hybrid era.
Crucially, though, the German constructor was not facing intense scrutiny from rivals over the legality of their power unit. Quite clearly, opposition from rival suppliers is far stronger now than it was then.
Fast-forward to today, and the immense spotlight on the 2026 Mercedes engine (specifically, its controversial compression ratio trick) has raised question marks and generated calls for action from manufacturers across the field.
The FIA has indeed agreed to change their scrutineering procedures for compression ratios. Starting from the 8th round in Monaco, the stewards will measure compression ratio at a higher temperature – a shift from the current tests conducted at ambient temperature.
In theory, this should prevent Mercedes from using the elevated temperatures when an engine is turned on to increase their compression ratio above the 16:1 limit.
With that said, some argue this change comes too late to combat an engine solution which – according to rivals – constitutes an unfair advantage. Speaking after his first qualifying of 2026, Lewis Hamilton touched on this issue.
Speaking to Sky Sports, Hamilton analysed the situation regarding Mercedes:
“What’s clear is they didn’t show the engine power through any of the practice, because there’s the whole talk of compression ratio.
“They’ve obviously done a really good job with their engine, which we have as well. But I want to understand why it was [they were gaining] two tenths or more just through power, per sector.
“So if it is the compression thing, I want to understand why the FIA haven’t done anything – what’s being done to rectify it.
“If it’s not [compression ratio] and just pure power, then we need to do a better job.”
All eyes on Mercedes
Ironically, one of the reasons why there wasn’t more immediate action against Mercedes is because – amongst other things – three other customer teams rely on the German manufacturer for their power units.
As a result, massively hurting four out of eleven teams just months before a new campaign was looked upon negatively. In this sense, the other engine suppliers were always in an uphill battle to get instant action against the Mercedes engine.
However, with none of the other Mercedes-powered teams even close to the Silver Arrows, this hesitation is not necessarily materialising as a valid justification for inaction.
Therefore, with no obvious challengers to the W18, this topic will likely become even more contested.
Although the 2022 regulations generated some criticism, they were successful in bringing the field closer together. Aside from Red Bull’s dominance in 2023, the previous regulation cycle saw multiple teams fighting at the front across multiple seasons.
By extension, though still the recipients of some complaints, the drivers enjoyed pushing the ground-effect cars to the limit.
This cannot be said of the 2026 cars, with the complex process of recharging the engine’s battery causing cars to slow down towards the end of straights – a highly unusual occurrence across F1 history.
In this sense, the early dominance Mercedes are enjoying will be taken even more negatively. As ever, the political aspect of Formula 1 is set to play an integral role at the beginning of a new regulation cycle.
The question is to what extent complaints from drivers and team principal will hurt the supremacy that Toto Wolff’s Mercedes have delivered for themselves.
