Mercedes’ F1 car reveal and McLaren’s ‘clever’ upgrade strategy
The Race F1 Podcast
The Race Media Ltd
4.5 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2026
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Thursday it was the turn of Mercedes to release the first images of its 2026 F1 car, the W17. Mercedes has long been tipped as a favourite, largely because of paddock rumours that its development for the new engine regulations was going extremely well. But what more can we glean now we've seen imagery of the car?
From an airport bar, Edd Straw is joined by Jon Noble to discuss that topic, before talk turns to McLaren. The world champion team has announced that it will miss day 1 of the private test in Barcelona as part of a wider plan on upgrades that seem to run counter to what its rivals are doing. Tune in to hear why Edd and Jon think it could prove a clever move in the long term, plus we share the latest we know about the upcoming meeting on engines, where the compression ratio saga will be discussed.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic |
| 0:02.0 | The Races |
| 0:05.0 | The Races on and the car Mercedes hopes will get it back to the front in F1 was revealed today, |
| 0:17.2 | as was customer team McLaren's plan not to run on the first day of the Barcelona |
| 0:21.2 | test. So what do we know about the two teams' prospects and which one is best place to take |
| 0:25.8 | advantage of the hotly tipped Merck Power Unit? I'm Ed's draw and joining me to tell all is John |
| 0:31.2 | Noble. Well, John, we've got the Mercedes, the latest car to be revealed. I should perhaps share with people |
| 0:38.9 | where we are. We're sat at a bar at this moment. Can you explain a little bit more context so we |
| 0:43.3 | sound slightly more professional? Yeah, it's not actually a bar for us to be drinking. We're on our |
| 0:48.8 | way to Barcelona for the Alpine launch. I think it's to be quite fascinating because it's |
| 0:53.6 | on a cruise ship, |
| 0:54.6 | so it'll be unlike anything we've seen or experienced before, but should be interesting. |
| 0:59.1 | But between leaving home this morning and getting to the airport, Mercedes has put some |
| 1:03.7 | renders out of its W17. So this probably isn't the final car, but it gives us at least a bit of a |
| 1:10.1 | semi-impression of what's coming. |
| 1:11.8 | The W17 E-performance, it's called E-performance as nobody who's going to refer to it as. But there's often no suffixes on prefixes, well, usually suffixes on these car names. Now, they haven't put out a huge amount or said a huge amount of this stage, but, you know, looks like a tidy car, doesn't it? |
| 1:27.4 | Which is no great surprise. |
| 1:29.3 | It's, |
| 1:30.3 | they render, |
| 1:31.1 | so they're never, said a huge amount of this stage, but, you know, it looks like a tidy car, doesn't it? Which is no great surprise. |
| 1:29.2 | It's, they're rendered, so they're never fully detailed. |
| 1:33.1 | But you can see it's got a few bits in common inside pod shape with some of the others. |
... |
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