Toto Wolff breaks down how Mercedes can recreate turbo-hybrid era domination with new regulations in 2026

Toto Wolff wishes to bring back the Mercedes glory days under 2026 regulations.

Toto Wolff breaks down how Mercedes can recreate turbo-hybrid era domination with new regulations in 2026

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff (via IMAGO)

Since Lewis Hamilton lost the 2021 F1 world championship to Max Verstappen, Mercedes has been going through a rough patch. They have won just one race in the last two season in the ground-effects regulation era and was winless in the 2023 season. Coming to this year, the team was hopeful of a comeback, but W15 had proved to be another poorly constructed challenger after the first two races of the season.

During the first race at the Bahrain GP that the drivers were seen struggling immensely. The car is not performing up to the Mercedes standards, and the team needs to make changes as soon as possible. According to team principal Toto Wolff, a bounce back before the start of new regulation is a longshot. Hence the team is banking on 2026 regulations and building a car as capable as the ones that helped Lewis Hamilton to dominate from, 2014 to 2020.

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There will be completely new regulations from 2026, especially when it comes to the engine. This gives us the opportunity to hopefully do as well as we did in 2014. If you as a driver can be there early, that is of course an advantage
Toto Wolff said (H&T: silverarrows.net).

Wolff made these comments while discussing how Mercedes can be a potential home for Max Verstappen and how having a better machinery would help them to hire his services. Mercedes seems to have realized the fact that they can’t catch up with Red Bull under current rules and the best option is to wait it out and have better cars for the future.

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Andrew Shovlin reveals the fundamental issues with the Mercedes W15

Mercedes faced a challenging start to their season with their new W15. The team hopes were dashed when they experienced major bumping issues. The team is currently trying to understand the major issue with the car. While addressing the issues, Andrew Shovline admitted that they are yet to figure out the fundamental flow with the car that is making their season worse.

Lewis Hamilton and Andrew Shovlin (via imago)
Lewis Hamilton and Andrew Shovlin (via imago)
The learning of it is just that when you change things you can see the differences. So one car making changes, you can see how it performs run to run. We can also look at the global performance of the two cars but fundamentally the limitations that we had in qualifying and the race, they were broadly the same for both. So it’s telling you it’s not a small difference, it’s not a tiny bit of camber or a spring or bar here and there. It’s something more fundamental that we need to dig into and understand.
Andrew Shovlin said.

The Mercedes drivers were trying to figure out the issue with balance at different speed ranges, and they complained about having a performance issue regarding the high speed. Mercedes will need to fix the issues to bounce back at the Australian GP and the two weeks break after the Saudi Arabian GP they now have might be enough to do it. 

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