With back-to-back Constructers’ Championships and Lando Norris winning the Drivers’ Championship in 2025, McLaren team boss Zak Brown is excited for the 2026 F1 season to start with the Australian GP.
McLaren uses a Mercedes engine. It has been argued over F1 pre-season testing that factory teams, such as Mercedes F1 team and Scuderia Ferrari, have a slight advantage compared to those teams that do not build their own engines.
Does McLaren need more understanding of the power unit?
Brown agrees that “there’s probably a little bit of knowledge advantage” for the factory teams. However, he says that McLaren’s knowledge and understanding grew each day over the last weeks. Zak Brown underlines that he is “sure that the equipment obviously has to be the same, and [he believes] it is the same”. The factory teams are required to provide the same equipment to ensure they do not have an advantage.
“But they’ll just have some greater, earlier insight that we’ll just have to catch up on our education. But I feel like we’re doing that.”
How much is unknown ahead of the F1 2026 Australian GP?
During testing, not all the teams reveal the true and full potential of their car. With sandbagging, or running the car at different fuel levels during the pre-season tests in Bahrain, how much is genuinely unknown ahead of the Australian GP?
“I think it is a genuine unknown,” Brown replies. He assures to not (over)react yet, as McLaren does not know everything as well. Everybody will show their car’s potential eventually during the F1 weekend since “on a long-run basis, it’s a little bit harder to hide what you have,” says Brown.
With qualifying it will be different. “When you get into […] one lap-mode, and everyone [is running] different fuel loads, some different tyres. I think there is an aspect of what we don’t know what to expect,” Brown explains.
Brown announces that he is excited for everything the 2026 Australian GP has to offer.
“I’m excited for free practice, qualifying, because it’ll start to kind of go, that’s where everybody is, and then on Sunday, see what the race looks like.”
