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Juan Pablo Montoya says McLaren need time to discover the ‘special’ tricks Mercedes are using to optimise their 2026 F1 engine.
World champions McLaren race with the same power unit as Mercedes but have been outclassed up to this point. The 89-point gap is partly down to reliability after Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were unable to take part in the Chinese GP.
But there’s a school of thought that Mercedes are holding back some power to protect their engine, such is their advantage.
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On average, McLaren have been just under six-tenths slower than the Silver Arrows over one lap, and eight-tenths down in race trim. That difference is unlikely to lie in the chassis alone, with Mercedes thought to be finding more performance from the power unit.
Juan Pablo Montoya says Mercedes are bound to keep secrets from McLaren
Mercedes are required under the regulations to provide McLaren with an identical engine, but at the season opener in Australia, Andrea Stella seemed frustrated by a perceived lack of support.
Works teams were tipped to have the advantage at the start of the new rules cycle as customers worked to close the knowledge gap.
Mercedes have fulfilled their obligations but F1 teams always look to exploit the rulebook. They had a particular incentive to do so in this case given that McLaren overtook them during the ground-effect era to become world champions.
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Juan Pablo Montoya thinks Mercedes have kept secrets about their engine 🕵️♂️
For example, Mercedes can reserve the best power unit engineers for themselves, even if they have to send ample support staff to McLaren.
“There are systems that Mercedes had developed that when they deliver them to you as the customer, you have to figure out how to download and load them,” Montoya explained to AS Colombia. “They deliver them to you like, ‘Let’s have a colouring class, I know how to paint the Mona Lisa, but I’m giving you crayons.’
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“There’s an initial disadvantage, which is normal because one is the one who makes the engine and the other is the customer. They’re giving you the same equipment, the hardware is exactly the same, but they’re not going to tell you how to use everything.
“They’ll explain, ‘Look, this works like this’, but the tricks and special things are something each team has to figure out, and they’re easy to find up to a point because you can download the telemetry and see a lot of what the other teams are doing, the speeds with the GPS, everything.”
Ron Dennis warned McLaren about using Mercedes engines
McLaren’s former boss Ron Dennis ended their Mercedes engine deal early in the last rule cycle, switching to Honda engines instead. He felt that they were always destined to be second best as a customer.
McLaren haven’t explored building their own F1 engine like Red Bull, but the Honda deal effectively made them a works team. Unfortunately, the Japanese giants weren’t prepared to return to F1 and they anchored their partners to the back of the field.
Based on a recent report, McLaren knew that renewing their Mercedes deal would hurt them at the beginning of 2026.
But they also backed Mercedes to build the best engine, and that faith has proved to be justified. In the long term, when they get closer to the power unit’s maximum potential, there’s no reason why they can’t win more championships.
Indeed, Montoya thinks McLaren will be back ‘winning every race’ before long. Like their rivals, they are readying a major upgrade for the Miami GP.
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