F1’s 2026 Engine War of Words’ Already Exploding

How are the F1 engine makers doing with just a few weeks left until their creations break cover?

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Five companies are supplying power units to eleven teams. Which are of them are reaching their goals and which are frantically fixing glaring issues? How confident are they going into the first phase of the brand new Formula 1 regulations cycle coming in 2026? What is being touted as one of the largest overhauls in the sport’s history? Could it be a Mercedes walkover…or could Honda maintain their sustained pressure? What about Audi, the mystery is incredible!

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00:00 Introduction
01:36 Renault
04:23 Ferrari
06:41 Audi
09:33 Red Bull-Ford
12:35 Honda
14:34 Mercedes
15:41 Who looks good, who looks bad?
20:00 One more thing…

Who’s Really Leading F1’s 2026 Engine Battle

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This is the question of Formula 1 right now. Nah, it’s got nothing to do with Lando Norris. It’s about who’s got the best motor in it. Well, I mean, it’s definitely not Reo since, well, they ain’t got a motor. Although, they could have. But realistically, right now, nobody outside the inner circles truly knows who nailed the 2026 power unit. The teams are working in their own little bubbles and even Pirelli, who has seen ballpark data for tire planning purposes, admit themselves that what they have could be outdated or very incomplete. Still, we can infer some things based on how confidently each team has presented itself. The uncertainty around all of these teams and how they have projected themselves, I think, is perfectly reasonable because the way the game works has considerably changed. It’s not about how many horses you’ve been able to cram into the back of your car. It’s also to do with battery deployment. The electrical side, it’s a 50/50 split. Say what you will about it. And all of the protest from Christian Ha to try and diminish the electrical priority. That is a thing we are going to have to consider. It is about how you’re able to deploy that energy, manage battery cooling, and all that jazz. And I know that doesn’t really sound sexy to the average motorsport enthusiast, but I can easily imagine it will become as much of a contentious situation as balance of performance is within World Endurance. So, the best we can do right now is try and rank from least to most confident all of the power unit suppliers going forward into 2026. There is quite a considerable gap in sentiment. One, well, we’ve already sunk, so what’s the point of even talking about it? And well, this is basically just what happened in 2014 all over again. At the bottom starts Renault because, well, they’ve already walked away from being an engine supplier. Despite planning to compete for 2026 and having made progress with development, Alpine, still owned by Renault Group, has ended 50 years of in-house engine involvement, which can easily be traced back to the turbo days of the late 1970s. And the gling thing about all of this is for newcomers to Formula 1 as that that these guys were pioneers. They won so many world titles and constructors victories. The way they bowed out of their final race in Formula 1, be it at least for now or forever, they were pinned to the back. That thanks from Alpine. If I were from Bishhation, I’d basically be saying no. Instead, Renault has decided to issue all of that history, all of that legacy after dropping the ball hard a decade ago and is instead made its specialist Mark team a customer of Mercedes. All after a CEO review, and it’s funny because the CEO has now moved on to somebody else, that the cost effectiveness of making their own power unit, considering they weren’t going to be having any customers, was simply not worth it. It simply was not worth the risk. Which is funny when you consider all of the stuff that happened in the early 2010s when Renault themselves have admitted that they dropped the ball hard with the turbo hybrid era at the beginning. Vastly underinvesting, vastly underestimating what the task was going to be to make those power units. You could easily argue that them dropping the ball so hard with their power unit is why we managed to see Max Fappen fly off the handle in his early years with Red Bull. Understandably, the staff over at the Shatim were furious, them staging a strike at the 2024 Italian Grand Prix and claiming that the engine that they had been working on was pretty much complete and looked promising. Their eyes, Renault was discarding a very valuable French sporting legacy as well as hard-earned expertise. Ironically, it may have been a far better foundation than their trouble 2014 unit. This was, make no mistake, a fully self-inflicted catastrophe. That the confidence from the Renault group board was so low that they chose not to listen to the experienced engineers who were in the room when they put that engine on the dyno and instead decided to shut the whole thing down. And it resulting in many of those staff members moving over to Ferrari and Mecca Chrome, who were actually making and manufacturing the parts that Renault have produced, now moving into bed with Audi. And trust me, Audi is going to be cropping up a lot of times in this video. Maybe the engineers were right that Renault might have actually had a fairly solid engine. That it might have actually produced opportunities for points. It certainly might have gotten them off the bottom of the constructors like they were in their final year when they were actually putting time and money into the power unit. So, we’ll never know the truth as to how good they were unless you talk about all the stuff involved with Ferrari and Renault staff members moving over there. Speaking of Ferrari, Ferrari lands in the uneasy category. They’ve lost major personnel recently. Wolf Zimmerman to Audi, an engineering marvel who turned things around from 2014 through 15, and then their aero guy Enrico Card to Aston Martin, and then plugged the gaps with new hires, including those, as I said, from Renault. Logical given how short staffed they’ve been and how many staff’s been poached by other teams. You have various publications within Italy gossiping that all the recent hires that came over to Marinelloo had taken a look at what Ferrari had produced or what they’ve been left with after departing people had fled the ship and then were absolutely flabbergasted. You then have more public reporting that Ferrari have hit stumbling blocks with their 2026 power unit project enough that their rivals are quietly watching Charlair’s patience tick down because next year it’s make or break for his future there. They have to get it right or else there’s a very real danger that they could have an all new lineup for 2027. I’m betting the ladder on a situation where we could see a very young lineup because well Ferrari is not exactly looking appealing. The allure will not be attracting frontline drivers. They are going to be believing in the future. Of course, Oliver Bman and then their academy driver going up into Formula 2, Rafael Cam. Yeah, go young and starry eyed, willing to please. And one of those stumbling blocks might have to do with an innovative steel cylinder head that had been in the works of Zimmerman. But that obviously then met reliability concerns. And since the guy who designed it is on his way out, they decided to go with something else. A revolutionary intake as reported by Planet F1. But to me, this sounds like a project that’s taken one too many wrong turns and has had to zigzag its way back into some sort of constant and way to move forward. Now, if you are a Ferrari fan, I am not going to be saying that this is an outright disaster or anything like that. But one thing you can reasonably say without having to get the foam out is that what’s going on around the Italian Mark is nothing akin to calm. But then you also have to consider that the Italian media does like to overamplify things and make things sound even worse than they actually are. So, okay, you might want to get the foam out for that bit. But the technical side of things, yesesh, that’s a bit more objective. Yes, Ferrari has been able to turn itself around eventually, but when it comes to what they’re getting from the dinos, I think during this winter, they’re having plenty of oh no moments. A step higher on the confidence ladder is Audi. See what I did there? Publicly, Audi sounds quite measured, not panicked. Bonato saying that their first dyno runs have been going well. And since the engine rules were already Audi’s entry point to begin with, they’ve been on this for years now. Their focus being at the moment reliability. You know, making sure nothing breaks when the car hits the track. In short, for 2026, they’re not really seeking glory. All they’re trying to do, I think, is to make sure that both cars finish the first Grand Prix without any hiccups whatsoever. And it’s something that I’ve talked about on this channel before a couple of times, and it’s why I’m probably going to be maining Audi next year as my main team, because I really want to see where that project goes, especially what we’ve seen last year, well technically still this year with Nico Hulenberg securing an absolute shocker podium before they became Audi. So, if anybody who works for Audi Formula 1 team is watching this, you’ve got yourself a fan right here. And behind that, you have some rather specific rumors which are of interest, but they’re not necessarily blowing up too much smoke into Audi’s tailpipe. According to those, Mercedes is said to have reached about 420 kW from the internal combustion engine, whilst Audi has managed to break through 400, leaving them about 20 to 30 down. Not that bad for a newcomer, but it all really rests on the battery now because the ice, yeah, that could be better. It’s roughly the same deficit Renault had to the front under the current rules, which is annoying rather than fatal. Especially these days that since we are no longer in the engine freeze period, engine manufacturers can continue to develop their cars. And with additional updates that go from reliability to more performance- ccentric targets, then you could easily see Audi make up the difference. and then they could be on par with Mercedes or they could just be within a matter of single figures which is not that bad in their first year and that maybe Bonato’s taken a softly softly approach before then ramping things up again. Also, let’s not forget as I mentioned earlier Audi’s been on a bit of a recruitment spree taking many key figures from within Ferrari and that is quite important considering that they used to have Ferrari engines at Salva but now they don’t have them anymore but they still have the personnel. So the capacity for them to be able to close the gap is still there, especially with Walt Zimmerman leading the charge and having Matia Bonato in charge and him being an absolutely innovative engineer in charge of Ferrari’s engine department. Oh, I’m pretty sure he has quite a few friends there who he can offer a job to or he knows personally and they might be wanting to escape Ferrari sinking ship. So the vibe I’m getting from Audi is that they’re just scratching their heads and going, “Oh, this is hard. Mercedes have gotten us beat at the moment.” But you know what? We’re up for the challenge. And oh, I like that feistiness. And thanks to the FIA’s extra catch-up allowances for anybody who might have missed the mark, Audi could easily stand to gain from all of this and quickly catch up. So, I’m really interested in to see how they fare. Then there’s Red Bull Ford powertrains. They just sit above Audi in my reckoning in terms of public confidence, but not necessarily performance expectations. It’s a very Red Bullesque sort of confidence. half bravado, half realism. You can definitely tell who the father is of that project. A father who has now lost custody of their own child. On one hand, you’ve got Red Bull’s own press material talking about how they’ve made a huge technical leap in becoming finally their own engine manufacturer that they have their own facility at Milton Keys just down the road. In fact, it’s just within a 100 meters or so. I’ve actually been to the Red Bull factory and the video I have made, it’s still in the approval process. It will come out eventually. I hope sometime this month. So stay tuned for that one. And of course it’s a good challenge for Ford’s side of things because they are in charge of all the stuff that is electrical, you know, the battery side of stuff. But then on the other hand though, since Christian Hornet departed and Lauri’s claim in and saw the enormity of the situation, also probably having been made privy to it over at VCarb, he describes the whole thing as a bit of a crazy challenge. you know, talking about this being the ultimate stress test, going from just taking on engines from a supplier to then making your own, you know, just trying to simply produce the damn thing. And now it’s a case of them having to walk back some of those initial claims and say, “Come off it, guys. Us outdoing Mercedes and Ferrari in our first year. Do me another one. That’d be silly.” And then you’ve also got to consider that, yeah, Ford are really pluckucky. That they are very determined. They’re relishing the challenge of getting back into Formula 1 for the first time in 20 years, but they are bringing in a lot of stuff that they have learned from their electrical vehicle side of things, not their F1 know-how. Yeah, they’re very enthusiastic, but they are still going up against it in a really critical moment for this team. Sure, we saw plenty of KZA in the V8 era, but Ford, it’s really not been that active, you know, since, well, many fans of Formula 1 these days were even born. Also, I believe that I’ve seen some rumors that at least one team or one manufacturer has really dropped the ball when it comes to fuel issues. So, in the midst of everyone trying to guess who exactly was the one to screw this particular aspect up, Red Bull understandably would now want to try and just remain a little bit quiet and extremely cautious. They don’t want to draw any attention to people saying, “Oh, that could be them.” Or if it is them, what’s going to that mean for Max Stapen? Or is he going to be really angry? Is he going to leave them? Is he going to abandon them? No, they don’t want those kind of spanners anywhere near their factory right now because overpromising right now risks them being made to be absolute fools and Max Stapen does not want to be seen as a fool who put faith in this project and then got nothing or little in return. Even if they’re not the ones in trouble, going along the lines of, well, we just need a robust unit that lets the chassis do its thing. That’s a rather sensible goal for year 1. And if they arrive next year with an engine that is just basically okay. It’s nothing special, but it’s like, you know, it’s all right. That’ll be a huge achievement in a minute itself. Anything on top of that? Nice. You’ll hear very positive clucking sounds from Max, I guarantee you. And then you reach Honda with Aston Martin. They’re starting to sound quite bullish actually. Honda’s public comments, which I talked about yesterday about them aiming for a winning power unit next year and beyond. This is all sounding rather rather promising for them. And then there’s Andy Cowell, who’s moved from being the team CEO to their envoy with Honda. He’s described next year’s power unit as already running on the dyno in Sakura, that’s Honda’s HQ, with Aston’s own gearbox planted at the back of it being tested. And he calls the whole packaging situation a hand in glove sort of thing. And many reports thusly are saying that if there’s anyone who’s going to be challenging Mercedes that it might be the same as it has been the last few years, that it’s basically going to be Honda versus Mercedes, but it’s not Red Bull versus Mercedes or Red Bull versus McLaren. No, no, no, no. It’s going to be Mercedes versus Aston Martin. And that in of itself is going to throw a whole lot of intrigue into the driver market, not just with Max, but also with Shaw. And it really helps them all that the Aston project in of itself looks really impressive, technically innovative. The factory looks swanky. All of their stuff by the end of next year will be online, including an updated simulator. They’ve got Adrien Newi on board. They’ve got the likes of Cal who was a whiz over at Mercedes and is now back in his own wheelhouse around engines instead of managing the press. And now you’ve got Honda Racing’s president Kji Watanab coming out there wearing the Honda badge on an Aston Martin website saying they’re on to something very special. And I think for many Aston Martin fans, it’s going to make them all go woohoo. Other than these moments of chess thumping, Honda’s been very, very quiet. So that might tell you that their current numbers are at least, you know, fairly good. Between their recent title winning record with Red Bull and a Ramco’s experience with sustainable fuels in the junior categories they’ve been supplying them to F3 and F2 this year, the ingredients are there for something pretty strong. If you force me to pick the biggest surprise of next year right now, I would lean toward Honda and Aston. Although Audi does remain notable in their own right, so naturally at the top of the confidence pile sits Toto Wolf. Duh. Nobody’s been really trumpeting this around Brackley, but I think it’s very safe to say that many fans out there and many pundits within the paddock have now resigned themselves to saying that, yeah, Mercedes look likely to be the favorites next year. They’ve accepted that this is basically 2014 all over again. But at the same time, that puts a lot of pressure on Mercedes because if you were around in 2014, Mercedes with their own factory car were absolute behemoths. So, anything less than that in Toto’s eyes will be an absolute failure. And that all ties into the thing that I talked about with Audi, that Mercedes were the benchmark in terms of the amount of output they had from their power unit, the internal combustion engine. And there is a clear sense that they probably started early due to the fact that the ground effect cars starting from the W13 proved to be a very troubling ordeal. So, it was probably best to try and adjust around the cost cap and then look to 2026. And as a result, according to them, they’ve already hit their internal targets. So, in terms of overall vibes, Mercedes looks the most self assured. So, which of these might be hiding a real disaster? And which ones might be bluffing their way toward a surprise? The fact that the FIA has had to create a special safety net scheme, as I mentioned earlier, with extra development and test batch hours for manufacturers who’d end up clearly off the pace or suffering chronic reliability issues, tells you that they are expecting really big gaps in performance here. So, you know how we’ve gotten used in the last couple of years of the field spread being around about a second or in the case of this year as close to 6/10 of a second between 1st and 20th. We could be going back to the days of there being 3, four, 5 seconds between 1st and 22nd. We could see the antiquated 107% rule back in the realms of the public interest people. Although having said that, these days it is a little bit of a toothless gimmick. But it is understandable that there is this thing from the FIA in place because there are lots of things in these engines that can go bang. That’s why we’ve got an extra pre-season test which is away from the cameras. So if there is anything that does go bang, very few people will be around to see it. Although I’m pretty sure we will hear about it through one way or another because you could wind up with a battery that underdelivers an effective sitting duck at the end of the straits if it’s anything to go by. You can chase combustion efficiency too hard and find out you’ve got an engine that, yeah, it’s pretty good, but it’s extremely fragile, which will then lead to grid drops later in the year. You could maybe get your fuel mix wrong and lock yourself into a dead end in either potency or guzzling the stuff too quickly, and you have to end up lifting and coasting because remember, you can’t refuel. So, I know that many people are going to be saying that, oh well, these teams are just sandbagging or something, but quite frankly, I don’t think they will be able to. Certainly not in this first year because there are far too many things to pack with bags of sand here. One of those things is going to end up revealing itself in the tests. But where you could easily say that there has been some drama is the way that teams are framing expectations. Because with Red Bull and Audi, they’ve got every reason to be downplaying their performance and instead talking about building a solid reliable unit that so long as they can finish the races, they might be able to acrue some points or podiums or wins in that regard. And if they decide to focus on that aspect of an engine INSTEAD OF SAYING POWER, AND IF IT DOES TURN OUT that they are a few ten of a second off the pace or maybe even a couple of seconds, fewer people around the world are going to be ending up crucifying them for it. And I know many people will be saying, “No, Red Bull’s got the pressure. They have to deliver because otherwise Max was stappen will walk away.” I really don’t see that. I think Max was stappen is a little bit more understanding these days, is a lot more mature about it, as well as being more aware and privy to all of the goings on in trying to get the project off the ground. I don’t think he’s going to walk away at the first sign of trouble. As long as he can sees meaningful progress, he’ll remain with them. And with Mercedes, the fact they’ve allowed paddock gossip to really spread itself instead of them championing it every single day is actually a bit of a beneficial advantage. If they ended up blowing their own trumpet too often and saying, “Ah, well, don’t worry worry. We have the best engine across the land. You know, there’s a reason why we got so many customers. It’s because we’re the best. We’re going to be absolutely tring them like we did in 2014.” If they end up delivering anything less than what they had in 2014, that would be a failure. And as I said earlier with Ferrari, anything that is mentioned in the press over there is going to be absolutely amplified. If it’s bad, oh, it’s the worst thing that could possibly be. But then equally, if it’s something that is, you know, okay, you’re not going to hear a lick or anything about it. And if it’s really something amazing, you’d be saying, “THIS IS SO GOING TO BE OUR YEAR.” WE’RE NOT hearing that. Not at all. So when you’re getting rumblings that at the very least they are worried about certain things and it’s quite safe to say they’ve had a major scare behind the scenes. On the surprise front, I do reckon that the pleasant one will be Honda with Aston. Their recent track record with their long-term commitment to F1 already guaranteed. If they end up turning up in barring with a power unit that is quite close to Mercedes, I don’t think the engineers in the paddock will be all that shocked. But a lot of casual fans will be. Oh yeah, you’ll be seeing plenty of Hypium knocking around all the Aston fans. People will say, “YEAH, NUMBER 33 IS COMING OUR WAY, LADS.” AND IF THERE’S ever a late bloomer award to be handed, I do think Audi’s made itself a strong claim because again, the FI will be offering a helping hand, especially to the newcomers. So for any Aston Martin and Alonzo fans, here’s to you. One more thing to chew on today. There is news that Mercedes is planning to reduce the amount of customers they have come the next regulation cycle in 2030. W saying that having two or three teams being supplied as the sweet spot down from the current four including themselves pointing directly to the production burden of making 16 power units for the first Grand Prix as well as the need to lock in designs earlier to appease their own customers. Sure, they’ll be making a lot of money from this endeavor and they’ll certainly be collecting a fairly decent amount of research and development tokens because well, they’re supplying so many teams and they’ll have their own engineers installed within said team. But then at the same time, that’s still a lot of logistics to be able to cart all of those engines across the globe. It’s a lot of time and effort as well as pressure in case there’s a major reliability issue because we saw that at the beginning of the season when Kimmy Anteneelli’s engine kept going bang and then other engines went bang and then eventually Lando got that oil leak and everyone was thinking gez Mercedes is not looking that reliable. I thought they were absolutely bulletproof. Remember all of that and this isn’t the first time that Wils talked about this. He said as early as 2022 that once the cost caps upside of providing teams financial stability have been exhausted then it would make sense to reduce the amount of customers Mercedes had. And if any of the other engine manufacturers prove to make an engine which is equal to or better than Mercedes, then it would make even more sense to reduce the pool. Not only to try and just focus on what they’ve got consolidated and what have you, but to potentially throttle competitors because Mercedes, the factory team, will need to be the priority. So then the real question lies in who will not be renewing their contract in 2030 or who may be dropped. Well, McLaren looks safe because they’re winning races and constructors titles with Mercedes Power. their deals already been extended to 2030 and both sides keep talking about maintaining this arrangement for many years to come and it helps that Zack Brown’s claim that their relationship with Mercedes is greater than the other customers that they have some sort of seat at the table arrangement regarding development. So in some ways you could argue that McLaren are partners with Mercedes, not just your bog standard customers who buy the bits that go to make a Mercedes engine. Then there’s Alpine who’ve just abandoned their own program to take on Mercedes power units. So for them to just abandon it all over again in a few years time, that wouldn’t make any sense whatsoever because the Renault group has bet the farm on them partnering up with Mercedes for many years to come. So if they suddenly stop doing all of that, then what does that say about the whole project? It will once again make the entire endeavor look absolutely ridiculous. So no, I don’t see them moving anytime soon. They’ve made their bed. The one I think will actually stand to maybe move away of their own accord instead of Mercedes dropping them is Williams, which is quite a surprise considering the connection that James Val has had with Toto in the fact that well they worked together for so long and then James took the plum to go over to the old haunt of Totos when he was the financial guru over there before he went over to Mercedes. Val has kept stressing over many interviews that Williams must not become a mini Mercedes and his public plan is to really go on to rebuild the full technical capability of Williams, maybe being really competitive by around 2028. So, who could wind up being their new suppliers? Well, it’s hard to say right now, but you could easily imagine one of the other manufacturers being interested in working with a team who might be on the up and up, especially if they really hit the ground running next year with Carlos Science and Alex Albon. Who knows, we might see Cadillac becoming the supplier of Williams as their first customer if they really hit the ground running in 2029 and then really nail with the brand new regulations in 2030. They could be completely brand new. They could be just an update of the 2026 rules, but we just have to wait and see. Maybe Audi might supply them in the years to come. If the VW group is really in love with Formula 1 and still sees a benefit in being in the sport, if they end up seeing vast amount of returns with the Audi brand, then who knows, we might see an Audi engine in the back of a Williams, but with a different badge as part of the group. Williams Porsche, Williams Lamborghini to promote one of their undermarks because let’s not forget Audi and Lamborghini are very much like that, sharing many, many parts against many of their supercars. And if you really want to be silly, if Toyota ends up making power units again, we could see a reunion of Williams Toyota. And if you’re thinking, Williams Toyota sounds stupid law. It was a thing in the late 2000s. Go look it up. And yes, Williams actually hosted a Toyota driver as well. Kazuki Nakajima. Yes, that Kazuki Nakajima. But okay, back to 2026. I seriously believe this is not the case of, “Oh, everyone’s fine. Really, they’re just messing with each other’s heads.” No, no, no. I don’t think there is an element of sandbagging here. There can’t be. Yeah, in a couple of years there could be. But right now, going into this first era of the regulation cycle, oh, absolutely not. Because one engine manufacturer has already bailed Renault. You got other suppliers hoping that whatever innovations they come up with in the midst of other trials and tribulations work or at least try and make them survive. And then of course, you’ve got others who are sharpening their knives to be real contenders at the front. There is a really big difference between all the suppliers, which when you put them all together is very obvious. It’s not really close, but regardless, this is going to be shaping up to be a fantastic season going forward. And it’s going to actually be starting early with livery reveals in just a few weeks time. And then, of course, it’s going to spark all of this. The new pecking order, a fantastically silly, silly season. But of course, that’s for another video. And another video is what I have for you right here. I really think you will enjoy it. So, allow me to get a drink of water and change my outfit, and I’ll see you over there.