F1 News
Wolff expects '25 season to be different: 'Teams will prioritise '26 car'
- Ludo van Denderen
The F1 cars for the 2025 season have yet to be unveiled, but many teams are already looking ahead to 2026. That year will bring the most significant regulation changes in years, affecting both aerodynamic aspects and engine development. Since 1 January, teams have been permitted to begin work on their 2026 designs. Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff anticipates that, shortly, all teams will shift their full focus toward preparing for the transformative season ahead.
Toto Wolff believes it was beneficial that teams were only permitted to start working on their 2026 cars from the start of this year, ensuring no one gained an early advantage. Meanwhile, teams are still hard at work preparing their 2025 cars, set to debut at the season opener in Australia this March. However, Wolff predicts that before long, teams will shift their full focus to the groundbreaking changes coming in 2026, leaving this year’s developments behind.
Wolff expects an early tipping point
"I guess that most of the team are going to choose a pretty early point of transitioning most of the resource into the new 2026 car," the Austrian told GPblog and others. "But we're talking about a couple of months up and down. I think everything is going to fall into place in the first few races and I'm not sure we're going to see lots of upgrades after the summer."
In any case, Wolff is hugely looking forward to the period ahead. He says: "I'm always energised by what we do. We are so lucky to work in this environment, in this sport, to have the honesty of the stopwatch, and at the same time being at the crossroads between the sport and business, part of a global sport, if not the biggest sport, and growing. So there's a lot of energy." Wolff concluded.
This article was written in collaboration with Toby Nixon
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