Otmar Szafnauer has looked at the second half of the season and decided Ferrari are yesterday’s news. The former Alpine team principal reckons McLaren, not the Scuderia, will finish 2026 as Mercedes’ closest challenger, and he is happy to say so on a podcast while Ferrari’s own championship bid quietly disintegrates in the background.
The Podcast Prophecy
Speaking on the High Performance Racing podcast alongside Jake Humphrey, Szafnauer laid out why he thinks the pecking order behind Mercedes is about to be rewritten. Lando Norris has won back to back at the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix, and Szafnauer sees that as more than a hot streak. It is, in his telling, the arrival of a fully assembled upgrade package finally doing what it was designed to do.
“Monza will be very important because [McLaren] brought an upgrade that did work in Hungary. I think they continued with that upgrade from what I read in Zandvoort, and now the upgrade’s complete. Let’s see how they go in Monza.” – Otmar Szafnauer
He was not shy about admitting he called this one wrong earlier in the year. Ferrari looked, for a stretch, like the team best placed to bother Mercedes. Szafnauer’s explanation is that with new regulations this season, every team is on a steep learning curve, and whoever lands their upgrade first looks unstoppable, right up until someone else lands theirs.
“I still think they’re going to be Mercedes’ closest competitor at the end of the season. I said that at the beginning, but it seemed like it was Ferrari. And I think it’s ebbing and flowing, the relative performance.” – Otmar Szafnauer, as reported by Motorsport.com
He even reached for a comparison further down the grid, noting how Racing Bulls suddenly looked “significantly quicker” than Alpine once their own upgrade landed, only for Alpine to claw their way back “there or thereabouts”. It is a fair point about how volatile 2026’s new rules have made the midfield, but it also quietly undercuts his own certainty about McLaren. If upgrades can flip the order that fast, why should McLaren’s edge prove any more permanent than Ferrari’s did?
Why Mercedes Are Playing It Cool
The more interesting part of Szafnauer’s analysis is not really about McLaren at all. It is about why Mercedes, sitting comfortably on top of the constructors’ table with 425 points, have not simply buried the opposition under a pile of new parts. His answer: the cost cap.
“They have upgrades now that they could bring, but once you start making those parts, it costs you, and they’ll go over the cap. So what they’re going to do, my guess is, one more upgrade, Malaysia/Singapore timeframe.” – Otmar Szafnauer
Szafnauer’s picture of a team rationing its own competitiveness is a useful reminder that the budget cap has quietly become as important as aerodynamics in deciding who wins races. Mercedes can keep doing CFD runs and wind tunnel work indefinitely, he explained, because none of that counts against the cap until parts are actually manufactured and bolted to a car. It is only when new wings, floors and bodywork get built that the bill arrives, and Mercedes, by his estimate, are close enough to their limit that they can afford one more big swing rather than a stream of smaller ones.
That is a plausible theory, and it fits the pattern of a team that has spread its development rather than front-loading it. But it is also worth remembering that rationing upgrades is exactly what a leader with a healthy cushion can afford to do. Mercedes have had the fastest car for most of the season and can gamble on a single Malaysia or Singapore-timeframe upgrade because they are not desperate. McLaren and Ferrari, chasing from behind, do not have that luxury.
The Numbers Do Not Quite Agree With the Narrative
Here is the problem with crowning McLaren as Mercedes’ closest challenger: the standings do not currently support it, and neither does Ferrari’s collapse being anywhere near as advanced as this theory requires. Mercedes lead the constructors’ championship with 425 points. Ferrari sit second on 338. McLaren are third on 263, some 75 points adrift of Ferrari and 162 behind Mercedes. Closing a gap of that size in the remaining races would require McLaren to not just match Mercedes’ pace but comfortably beat it, race after race, while Ferrari simultaneously stalls.
The driver picture tells a similar story. Kimi Antonelli leads the drivers’ championship on 242 points, with Norris fourth on 159, some 83 points back. Norris has genuinely been the form driver of the last two rounds, winning at both the Hungaroring and Zandvoort, and that momentum is real. But a hot streak from a driver 83 points off the lead is not the same as a title fight, and Szafnauer’s podcast comments are about the constructors’ order behind Mercedes, not a serious tilt at Antonelli’s crown.
Norris himself has been careful not to overclaim, telling Sky Sports after signing his contract extension to 2030 that McLaren are working better than they ever have, but stopping short of promising a championship. He has said the team can “easily” fight for the title if they sharpen up specific areas of the car, which is a very different claim from Szafnauer’s flat prediction that McLaren will simply be there at the end of the season, ahead of Ferrari.
Monza Will Tell Us Whether Any of This Holds Up
Szafnauer’s case rests entirely on next weekend. The Italian Grand Prix, where he expects McLaren’s upgrade to finally show its full potential with every component now integrated, is scheduled for 13:00 UTC on Sunday 6 September, check the calendar for your local time. If McLaren dominate at Monza the way they did at Zandvoort, Szafnauer’s theory starts looking prescient. If Ferrari respond, or if Mercedes’ current package simply proves too strong regardless of the cap, this will read as another confident podcast take that aged badly by October.
Predicting the order behind a dominant championship leader makes for good podcast content, but it is worth treating with a healthy dose of scepticism until the points on the board actually back it up. Right now, Ferrari are 75 points clear of McLaren in second place. That is not a gap that evaporates because one upgrade finally “completed” itself in time for Monza.
