{"id":358574,"date":"2025-12-20T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/358574\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:19:10","slug":"the-big-doubt-looming-over-mercedes-heading-into-f1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/358574\/","title":{"rendered":"The big doubt looming over Mercedes heading into F1 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> boss Toto Wolff has questioned whether it has \u201cambitious enough\u201d targets going into the 2026 Formula 1<\/a> season.<\/p>\n

The German marque<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

It managed to secure second place in the Constructors\u2019 Championship in 2025 ahead of Red Bull and Ferrari, but wasn\u2019t not able to mount a consistent challenge.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But the sport\u2019s brand-new technical regulations are bringing a real sense of unknown, making anyone willing to bet on an outcome an extremely brave person indeed.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is super difficult to predict,\u201d he told media including Motorsport Week. \u201cBecause we set ourselves targets that we are on track to meet. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is not far away. Eight weeks. It is actually awful to say. Today was the first day in the morning where I thought, \u2018I don\u2019t want to go to a race track\u2019. So, to be honest, no idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TotoToto Wolff is unsure whether Mercedes has set high enough targets for 2026, but will be hopeful of more moments such at this<\/p>\n

2013-14 F1 transition for Mercedes \u2018not comparable\u2019 to 2025-26 <\/p>\n

This is the first highly significant change in the sport\u2019s regulations since the introduction of V6 hybrids in 2014, which was successfully mastered by Mercedes.<\/p>\n

The entirety of the pre-ground-effect era saw the team win all but one Drivers\u2019 Championship, and every Constructors\u2019 Championship.<\/p>\n

Asked how the end of 2025 into \u201926 compares to the end of 2013 into \u201914, Wolff intimated that the two are not quite the same, due to the breadth of competition F1 now has.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ended up winning three races and [finished] P2, and certainly more cheerful than today, considering where we came from.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then landing in \u201914, I kind of had the feeling already in the winter when we were the first ones running a full car dyno. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe engine was more reliable than it seemed with the other people. And obviously they went testing, nobody did some laps. We did. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, it is not comparable, I would say. The grid is just much more competitive than it was in previous years.\u201d<\/p>\n

READ MORE \u2013 Why Mercedes feels \u2018sorry\u2019 for Lewis Hamilton amid continued F1 struggles at Ferrari<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has questioned whether it has \u201cambitious enough\u201d targets going into the 2026 Formula 1…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358575,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,1881,82,16008],"class_list":{"0":"post-358574","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-mercedes","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-wolff"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358574\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}