Brown Refuses to Rule Out a McLaren Engine
Zak Brown has declined to rule out McLaren building its own power unit at some point in the future, in comments reported by Formula1.it that put the team's frustration with its Mercedes supply on the record.
He was careful about it. This is not an announcement, and Brown said as much himself. But a McLaren chief executive publicly leaving that door open is a shift from where the team has stood for years.
What Brown said
The quote is short and it is hedged.
"It's easier said than done, but if the regulations turn out to be interesting, we'll think about it."
Two conditions sit inside one sentence. Building an engine is hard, and McLaren would only consider it if a future rule set made the economics work. Neither of those is a commitment. What they do is establish that the idea is being discussed at all.
Worth noting: Formula1.it does not say where or when Brown made these comments. There is no named outlet, press conference or date attached. During the shutdown, older interviews get recycled, so treat the timing as unverified even though the quote itself is on the source page.
The customer problem
The friction behind the remark is more interesting than the remark itself. McLaren has been a Mercedes customer since 2021 and that relationship has been comfortable. The 2026 regulations changed the terms of it.
Team principal Andrea Stella put it plainly, describing this as the first time McLaren has found itself badly placed as a customer.
That is the whole issue in one line. A works team knows what its engine will do before anyone else. A customer team finds out later, and in a season where the power unit is a much larger share of overall lap time, later is expensive. Every design decision downstream of the engine, packaging, cooling, the shape of the rear of the car, depends on information that arrives on the manufacturer's schedule rather than yours.
In a stable rule set that lag costs you very little. In the first year of an all new formula it costs you a season.
Why building one is a different order of problem
Brown's "easier said than done" is doing a lot of work. A modern Formula 1 power unit programme means a separate facility, a separate hiring race for people who are already employed by four or five rivals, and a budget that sits under its own cost cap rather than the team's.
It also means committing years before you see a return. Audi and Ford both started their current programmes long before 2026, and Honda's history in the sport is a reminder that arriving late with an engine is a specific and painful way to spend money.
McLaren has been here before. The Honda partnership between 2015 and 2017 is the reference point nobody at Woking needs reminding of, and it was a supply deal rather than an in-house build.
So the sensible reading is not that McLaren is about to start. It is that McLaren wants the option to exist, and wants Mercedes to know it exists.
The regulations are the real variable
Brown attached his interest to the rules being "interesting", which is the part that decides everything. Formula 1 is currently running two parallel sets of engine discussions about what comes after the present formula, including whether some form of simpler, cheaper unit returns.
A simpler engine changes the maths completely. If the barrier to entry drops, a team with McLaren's resources and its own applied technologies arm can plausibly consider it. If the next formula stays as complex as the current one, the conversation ends where it started.
Which is presumably why Brown answered the way he did. He has committed to nothing and he has kept the option alive, which is what you do when the decision is not yours to make yet.
What it means for now
Nothing changes for this season. McLaren runs Mercedes power in 2026 and Lando Norris took the team's first win of the year in Hungary, so the package is not without merit.
But a customer who publicly says the supply relationship has stopped working is negotiating in the open. Whether the leverage is aimed at Mercedes or at the rule makers, the message lands with both.
The Dutch Grand Prix is the first chance to ask Brown and Stella about it face to face.
Source: Formula1.it
One F1 fan comment on “Brown Refuses to Rule Out a McLaren Engine”
💬 Join the conversation — see the latest comments from F1 fans →
When Mcl started making its own road cars, it took an old Nissan engine and just updated it, so It was cheap to do, Ive nodoubt they could build there own engines but at what cost, and you need a good 5 years stable regs to get the roi, gone are the days of selling your engines to teams, , well all except Merc that is, my guess is The owners wont do it aslong as they are getting a good roi as it stands, why bother