Wolff unsure of future success: 'No guarantee we get it right'

Toto Wolff is keeping his cards close to his chest with regards to how preparations for the new F1 rules slate in 2026 are going at Mercedes.

The next regulations cycle will see F1 introduce new chassis and engine specifications, meaning teams are already starting to their turn attention to that next era.

Of the 10 teams in F1, six will be producing power units, including Wolff's Mercedes. Those other manufacturers are: Red Bull, Ferrari, Alpine (Renault), Aston Martin (Honda) and Audi.

The last time the engine rules changed, the Brackley-based team stole a march on the opposition, but the Austrian is fronting cautious optimism when speaking about how plans are developing, using those past triumphs to inform his view, whilst highlighting it does not, however, mean future success is a certainty.

"Well, this is the certain degree of confidence that I have in our in our abilities," the 52-year-old replied to media including RacingNews365 when asked about Mercedes' power unit progress ahead of the 2026 season.

"We saw at HPP [Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains] in 2014, we got that right, but there's no guarantee we're going to get it right in ’26."

The Mercedes team principal believes his team is working to the right level for the 2026 era, highlighting how the changes ahead of the 2014 season where more substantial.

"We are giving it the utmost effort and we've set targets that we believe that are high enough and ambitious enough to have a very competitive power unit," Wolff said.

"2014 was a more journey into the unknown because it was such a change of regulation, but this is a little bit [of a] similar situation [to the existing rules]."

However, the last time rules in F1 changed a substantive amount - when ground-effects were re-introduced at the start of 2022 - Mercedes struggled to adapt.

The team has spent the past two-and-a-bit years in relative wilderness, when contrasted against the run that saw the team win eight consecutive constructors' titles between 2014 and 2021.

With chassis rules also expected to be heavily changed for 2026, the power unit regulations are just one side of the equation.