Mercedes avoiding the one ‘temptation’ too risky to embrace

Mercedes is locked in a fierce three-way battle for second place in F1’s Constructors’ championship but the Brackley squad is playing the long game and won’t succumb to the temptation of diverting additional resources into its 2025 car.

Determined not to repeat the mistakes that left it on the back foot at the start of the current regulation cycle, the team is prioritising a strong launch into the sport’s radically new 2026 era.

As teams head into the final three races of the season, Mercedes currently holds a 32-point cushion over Red Bull in the standings, with Ferrari 6 points further adrift in fourth place. With Las Vegas looming – the scene of George Russell’s victory last year – the German outfit understands the importance of maximising every remaining opportunity for points.

Yet despite the championship pressure, Mercedes refuses to blink. Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin made clear that the team will not sacrifice long-term gains for short-term comfort.

“At the track, we’re completely focused on fighting for second in the Constructors’ Championship,” Shovlin told reporters in Brazil last time out.

“We have been all along, as a team, really disciplined in saying we can’t put resources back into this year in order to try and bring a late update to make our lives a bit easier.

“Because ultimately, when you start with a new set of regulations, starting on the front foot is absolutely key, and where we’ve won championships, that’s what we’ve done.”

Learning From the Pain of 2022

Mercedes’ caution is rooted in experience. The team’s misreading of the 2022 ground-effect rules forced it into two years of recovery, and Shovlin emphasised that such a stumble cannot be repeated.

“If you look back to the most recent regulations in 2022, we started on the back foot and it’s been difficult from there onwards, so we were never going to give in to temptation and put the [current] car back in [development],” he said.

He added that this strategically conservative approach is shared across F1’s top teams.

“Everyone at the track, the drivers, are all focused on delivering, and if you look at Red Bull, I mean, OK, they had a relatively recent upgrade with the floor, but by and large, the teams that we would expect to be fighting with have done similar and put a lot of resource into next year.”

Eyes Locked on 2026

With the impending regulatory overhaul – covering chassis, aerodynamics, and a radically revised power unit formula – teams face a challenge unlike any in recent years. Shovlin stressed that while Mercedes believes it is better prepared than last time, the new rules will inevitably carry unknowns.

"You know, there are always going to be traps, and there are going to be teams that are disappointed with the job they've done," he explained.

"You would never walk into a new set of regulations thinking it'll be straightforward, but what you would say is that the regulations move back towards the previous generation of car, where you're unlikely to get the same issues with porpoising that affected the start of these regulations.

"Even if there were problems like that, with what we've learned in the intervening period, with the tools we've developed to understand aerodynamics, we would be in a better place to deal with it.

"But there is always the challenge of trying to get a new formula balance because we can do work in the simulators, but really, until you start running the car on track, you don't know exactly how it is going to behave."

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Mercedes’ stance is a pragmatic one: pursue second place with what it already has, wagering that a disciplined investment into 2026 will pay vastly greater dividends.

In an environment where every team is guessing at the unknown, the eight-time Constructors’ Champions are betting that starting strong in a new era matters more than chasing marginal gains in the final chapters of the current one.

If the next rules cycle rewards early mastery as it has in the past, Mercedes’ restraint today may prove the foundation of its resurgence tomorrow.

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