Wolff signals slimmer Mercedes customer roster for next rules era
Mercedes is preparing to tighten its engine supply network in the next regulation cycle, with Toto Wolff making clear the works team doesn’t plan to power as many cars up and down the pit lane as it does now.
Speaking on F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast, Wolff said the company is reassessing how many customers its Brixworth-based High Performance Powertrains division should support when the rules reset after the incoming 2026 era runs its course.
“I think where our current mindset is, also discussing with Ola [Källenius], is that we will reduce the number of teams we are going to supply in the next cycle,” Wolff said. “We don’t know whether the truth is between two and three [in total]… it depends on new regulations going forward. Are they rather simple or not? … It’s not going to be four anymore.”
Mercedes HPP is one of five power unit manufacturers on the grid alongside Ferrari, Honda, Audi and Red Bull Powertrains/Ford. Its hardware sits in the back of the works cars and long-standing partners McLaren and Williams, with Alpine set to join the fold for 2026. That spread has traditionally given Mercedes a data deluge when the lights go out on a fresh ruleset — more cars, more mileage, more feedback — but it also brings logistical heft and earlier design lock-ins that can bite.
“When you consider how many engines we need to ship to Melbourne, for all of us, 16 engines… longer lead times, longer production cycles,” Wolff said. “All of that going forward, it’s not going to be four anymore.”
Hywel Thomas, managing director at HPP, outlined the same push-pull from the factory floor. More partners equals more learning — and more headaches.
“We’ve shown in the past that having more than one team, you’re getting more data, more information… you’ve got four times the engineers all sitting around telling you, ‘No, you can do this better,’ and that is very, very beneficial,” Thomas said. “Doesn’t always feel like it, but it definitely is in terms of making a great product.
“But the flip of that is, we’ve got to make a lot of hardware. We’ve got to make a few decisions earlier. I’m not even sure whether the right place is one team, two teams, three teams, or four teams. There’s definitely a sweet spot in there somewhere. I think it’s probably nearer four than one.”
That “sweet spot” is where the internal debate clearly lives. Wolff wants a leaner roster in the long term; Thomas sees value in a wider customer map. What’s not up for debate is the priority. HPP exists to serve the Mercedes works operation first.
“We are wholly owned by Mercedes. We exist to do one thing, and that’s to win World Championships with Mercedes,” Thomas said. “That’s why I sit in a Mercedes garage, and it’s why the relationships with the engineering group in Brackley are so strong.”
Wolff was even blunter. Customer wins are nice-to-have. The star on the nose is the must-have.
“The raison d’être for HPP is to win World Championships with the works team,” he said. “In order to make the economies work and also to use it as a test bench and a comparison to the works team, it’s good that we have the customer supply situation.
“There will always be a part of Hywel, and I think HPP, that is allowed to cheer for their power unit to have won a championship,” Wolff added. “But the mindset we always had is that this power unit has won a Constructors’ World Championship. That means our car wasn’t good enough… For us, being able to benchmark ourselves, you can at least take the power unit out of the equation. So on the chassis side, we haven’t done that.”
Read between the lines and the plan looks pragmatic. Keep enough partner cars for data and benchmarking — the “test bench” Wolff references — but not so many that Brixworth is forced into conservative choices or long lead times that blunt development agility. In practice, that likely means some of today’s Mercedes-powered teams won’t be by the time the next rules arrive.
For now, Mercedes will head into the 2026 reset with a large footprint and a familiar philosophy: build a PU that can win, use customer programs to accelerate the learning, and make sure the car in silver is the one that cashes the cheques. The next era after that? Fewer shirts to ship, fewer engines to box up, and a tighter circle around Brackley and Brixworth.
- Alex Albuquerque
