How Christian Horner scored a significant victory over Toto Wolff

In an extensive plea to the media in Bahrain, including GPblog, Christian Horner recently outlined his key arguments for making a last-minute change to the new power units: the Brit wanted to prevent the new regulations from forcing drivers to lift and coast, “which is going to be not particularly good for the sport and hugely frustrating for the drivers.”

What Horner did not say, however, was the actual reason for the call to change. Red Bull Powertrains had, in fact, the greatest difficulty in developing a good battery that provides 50 percent of the drive within the engine. The other 50 percent comes from the combustion engine. Red Bull is not alone, Ferrari, Audi, and Honda are also known to have battery issues.

Mercedes however, had no issues. The German manufacturer has been looking forward to 2026 with great pleasure for the last few months, where it seemed that Mercedes could come up with an engine that could simply blow everyone else on the grid away. What Mercedes saw as extremely positive, was precisely the nightmare scenario for the competition: the Mercedes engine could be so powerful, that the Mercedes-powered teams could gain the upper hand from ‘26 onwards.

It's not so strange that Wolff was completely against making adjustments, due to the contribution of the battery - which would give Mercedes the advantage - being reduced within the engine. The Austrian and his team have indeed done their homework the best and would now be punished for the incompetence of their adversaries. Wolff called the idea that changes would be made last weekend in Saudi Arabia ‘ridiculous’.

Regarding the exact, new distribution of battery balance with the combustion engine, there's still some thinking to do. But one thing is for sure. In the decision-making process of Formula 1, the majority rules. In this case, it means that Horner - supported by his allies from Ferrari, Audi, and Honda - gets his way and Wolff thus has significant bad luck.