The opening of the 2026 Formula 1 season in Melbourne should finally clarify the order of forces after a pre-season marked by uncertainty in Bahrain. McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are pointed out as the main candidates, but the hierarchy between them remains undefined. For Hywel Thomas, head of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, qualifying in Australia will be the first real snapshot of the championship.
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“The first real test is qualifying in Melbourne,” he stated. “Until then, you have little idea of fuel loads, of who is sandbagging — this is the first time everyone will show up and give their best. It’s a relative game. We might think we’ve done a great job. If others have done a better job, suddenly it’s a horrible job. The opposite; we feel we’ve done a terrible job, we barely made it, and everyone else is in a slightly worse situation, suddenly we can be the heroes.”
Mercedes arrives with its new engine also powering McLaren, Williams and Alpine. Although the regulations require equal specifications for customers, Thomas indicated that being a works team can bring natural benefits: “As a works team, 45 minutes down the road [between HPP and the F1 factory], there are simply more connections. There are more links between the engineering groups, there are more links between the hierarchy of the organizations. Naturally, you would think there is a benefit and more advantage,” he told The Times.
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“On most things, the chassis teams agree [with the power unit side], so it’s not a big problem. But when there’s something where perhaps the works team is going in a slightly different direction, and the customer says: ‘Oh, can’t we follow a different [design] direction?’ It will always be the works team that you follow,” he concluded.
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