Although Mercedes sits atop the F1 team standings, and has the top two drivers in the individual standings, team principal Toto Wolff is speaking out about funding disparities relative to the team’s top competitors.
After a second-place finish in the 2025 team standings, Mercedes’ driver pairing of Kimi Antonelli and George Russell combined to win the first six races in 2026 and eight of 10 to start the season.
McLaren, which won the 2025 constructors’ championship, was winless in the first 10 races this season before 2025 F1 champion Lando Norris won each of the last two races for the team in Hungary and Netherlands, bridging F1’s midseason break.
The adjusted Ferrari team, anchored by seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton, won the other two races where Mercedes failed to finish on top, in Spain and Great Britain. Ferrari sits in second place in the constructors’ standings, 87 points behind Mercedes.
The McLaren and Ferrari surges came on the back of major upgrade packages that have revived each team’s season. Wolff said Mercedes has been unable to match those upgrades.
“We haven’t got the money to put developments on the car,” Wolff said. “I said it before, we are trying to evenly split that through the season, based on our calculations of when we can bring the biggest updates and optimizing the championship points. We just can’t do what we can’t do.
“That’s why it is a development race. If you bring an upgrade, each of the top teams will have a couple of tenths in it, at least, and that’s what you lose. So, yeah, the ride has been a bit tougher than at the beginning of the year.”
Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli, who has won six races this season and is atop the F1 standings, didn’t hide his feelings when talking after his second-place finish in Sunday’s Dutch Grand Prix.
“We’re clearly not the fastest car anymore on the grid,” said Antonelli, who turns 20 on Tuesday. “We’re probably second or third, at least in (Sunday’s) race, and McLaren has taken a huge step, especially since Hungary, since the big upgrade package they brought.”
With teams capped in terms of how much money they can spend in a season ($215 million), Wolff hinted at the possibility that Mercedes is setting much of what is left in that money for a final push later in the season.
“You will see if toward the end of the season (if the other teams) are going to be able to deploy as much stuff onto the car as they do now,” Wolff said. “Someone might have a different strategy in spending more at the beginning and in the middle of the year than toward the end.”
“I’m confident with the team. The team has been working super hard on this next package that is coming up and they just want to make sure that it’s going to work out well once we put it on,” Antonelli added. “So for sure, in this race, it’s going to be more difficult, it’s going to be challenging, but we’re ready to do our best and to maximize every opportunity.
“And then hopefully it’s going to be our turn to bring the package that’s going to give us a little bit of the upper hand again.”
–Field Level Media
