Craig ScarboroughMercedes has been on fire this season.
Five poles and five wins from five races shows that the famous German manufacturer have been the team to beat at the start of this season.
So far, they have only missed out on the Miami sprint win.
And looking at how much closer the competition has got to them, it shows Mercedes cannot be and have not been complacent.
At the Canadian Grand Prix, Mercedes brought a raft of small updates, which appeared to have kept them at the sharp end of the grid.
The W18 car is the class of the field, albeit just five races into the season.
Despite having the same power unit as one of its closest rivals, it’s clear the factory team made better use of its energy management to keep ahead of McLaren.
It could be argued that there is a small top end power advantage, which also keeps them clear of Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.
But these strengths are not without mitigating weaknesses, the power unit has been shown to be unreliable at times.
At the race start, it’s clear that Mercedes have not had the best getaways. Plus the car has not had the performance through the corners of the Ferrari.
Looking at the events at the circuit Gilles Villeneuve this weekend, we can see a few gains and a few areas still to work on.
Race Starts
In both the sprint and the grand prix, both the Mercedes cars had at least as strong a getaway as their rivals behind them.
Toto Wolff was vocal in getting the FIA to amend the race starts from the start of the season, to allow time for the drivers to prepare the turbo before the five light start sequence.
Ferrari did not require the additional time and even with this dispensation, Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton regularly made the best starts in the opening races.
How the start of the Canadian Grand Prix looked from the grandstand! 🤩#F1 #CanadianGP pic.twitter.com/6LqWhGL2Cn
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 25, 2026
The additional development time afforded to the teams by the loss of the two middle east grand prix has given all the teams an opportunity to look at this issue.
While Miami did not show a huge improvement, further work in the past fortnight bore fruit at the start of both the races this weekend.
Little has been said about how exactly the team has made such an improvement.
No doubt out lap strategy modes and procedures in the five second pre-race light sequence have helped.
One area that was announced was that Antonelli had a slightly different clutch paddle.
Without detailed pictures, it’s hard to be sure of the exact changes.
From a distance the clutch paddle and its fingergrips look similar to the usual Mercedes, long single paddle set up.
But this no doubt helped along with lots of other small detail changes.
Aero package
A series of aero updates were announced to the FIA for the race at Montreal.
Although large in number, do not consider this as a major specification update to the car.
Starting at the front, there was a key change to the outboard spans of the front wing.
The wing’s frontal profile is flatter overall, such that the wing now meets the end plate low down by the footplate, rather than midway up.
There are commensurate changes to the angle of attack and trailing edge profile, so that the wing is not excessively steep right next to the endplate.
Then, the side profile of the end plate has been changed with a distinctly more rounded shape, aided by a cut out along the top edge.
One tiny additional feature on the endplate is a small outwash vane on the large horizontal flick.
Together, these changes have been announced to be for managing air flow around the front tyre towards the rear of the car, along with an increase in downforce.
Given the braking demands of this circuit, there were also changes to the brake ducts to manage cooling.
READ MY TECHNICAL REVIEW ON THE CIRCUIT GILLES VILLENEUVE
The cake tin’s vane was also reprofiled, but this was more related to the front wing flow conditioning work, than cooling.
Under the front of the floor the leading-edge teeth were updated, the outer pair of teeth gaining a horizontal vane in between them.
Other teams run a full width vane across all 4 teeth. This helps guide the flow under the floor.
If the FIA allows slots in the floor, the teams will try to pack as many in as they can.
Starting with an already complex rear floor corner slot setup, Mercedes went even further by splitting the existing slots up into multiple additional slots.
Using longitudinal fences to both support the open slots and direct air flow inboard and outboard around the rear tyre.
There’s now six slots with several of them further broken up by the fence/supports.
Lastly the diffuser has additions to its trailing edge and winglets.
Where there used to be a wedge shape extension to the diffuser, this is now broken up into three toothed serrations.
Each has a blister moulded into their upper surface.
This could be part of the aerodynamic shaping, but as two of them sprout an air pressure sensor, the blister might just be housing the sensors.
Mercedes have frequently played with serrations in various areas of the car over the years.
These appear to be working with the upwash between the diffuser and rear wing.
Especially as Mercedes introduced a simple flick tail behind the exhaust at the Miami GP, which also works in creating upwash for more downforce.
Finally, the winglet stack mounted to the side of the diffuser has been augmented with small twisted vanes, directing airflow outwards.
Power Unit
Throughout testing, Mercedes kept a cap on its rival seeing the performance of its power unit.
This may have been the usual sandbagging during testing, but at the same time the team were also lobbying to be allowed to use their compression ratio ‘trick’.
That exploited a potential loophole in the regulations where the engines compression ratio was only measured at room temperature.
It’s acknowledged that compression ratio may well increase naturally, as the engine reaches its working temperature over one hundred degrees above room temperature.
But any such increase would be of a few just decimal places, it’s believed Mercedes have a design that allows a jump of two digits.
READ MY GUIDE TO THE 2026 POWER UNIT REGULATIONS HERE
Being able to run such a higher compression ratio to its rivals will allow for more peak horsepower from the combustion engine.
With the FIA finally allowing Mercedes to have a significantly different compression ratio between hot and cold, it updated its power unit for the first grand prix from the test unit.
Immediately, it was clear that the M17E was both a very powerful combustion engine but also was able to recover energy better than its rivals, giving a longer duration to the hybrid’s deployment.
Given the complexity of the new 2026 power units, unreliability should not have been a surprise.
But given everything else going so well for the Mercedes factory team, losing track time and race positions to failures is cause for concern.
George Russell suffered a battery failure in the Canadian race, leading to retirement.
RUSSELL OUT ❌
Heading onboard as George Russell gets out of his stricken Mercedes ⬇️#F1 #CanadianGP pic.twitter.com/cKzyCh0hgA
— Formula 1 (@F1) May 24, 2026
Although we have not had many races, it does appear the battery is a weak point.
Of course, the regulations allow updates for reliability reasons.
So Mercedes are not expected to carry a handicap through the entire season.
The dispensation to run some form of system inside the combustion engine to meet 16:1 compression ratio at room temperature.
But potentially 18:1 when at operating temperature, will come to an end after the next race in Monaco.
This means there is the potential for Mercedes to lose some of their combustion engine power advantage in the next phase of the season.
Whether this will be enough to lose their advantage to the competition cannot be predicted.
Of course, Mercedes knew they may not have been able to run the compression ratio trick in the first 5 races.
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We must believe they had an alternative package prepared for the first race and have now had months to prepare its combustion engine for the loss of this trick.
Nonetheless, the energy management gains Mercedes have found over its competition will remain.
The gap with McLaren has decreased as its customer team has refined hybrid strategy management.
Given the closeness of the two Mercedes drivers, performances and its rivals edging ever closer suggests, we are in for an exciting mid-season battle.
But the points haul from these first races put Mercedes in a very comfortable position in both championships.
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Fraser Masefield
