Wolff concedes upgraded Mercedes is ‘a little more tricky to drive’ as he backs split-spec strategy

Toto Wolff believes that the decision to split the car specifications between Kimi Antonelli and George Russell in Singapore is a necessary “compromise” to work out why the upgraded Mercedes seems “a little more tricky to drive”.

Instead of bringing regular tweaks to their challenger, the Silver Arrows waited until the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to introduce their first major update in four months – which failed to deliver the boost that they had predicted.

For that reason, they chose to revert Russell to the specification they last ran in Azerbaijan – where he dominated Qualifying and won the Grand Prix – and directly compare him to his team mate.

Contrastingly, Antonelli was to remain in the upgraded W17 and test a new front wing in order to gather some conclusive data, but nevertheless ended up finishing behind the Briton in both FP1 and Sprint Qualifying.

After admitting that the Marina Bay Street Circuit is an outlier on the calendar, Team Principal Wolff explained: “There is a pattern, but most importantly is to really dissect what's working and what's not on the old and the new spec and then finding a way forward, picking the best bits and seeing where the development direction needs to get us in order to extract the optimum lap time.

“Now, having said that, obviously running two different cars is not always ideal, but it's a compromise we just need to take. So, we have two test pilots at the moment. We need to take it in order to ensure that we're doing the right thing for next year as well.

“The new car seems to be a little more tricky to drive. Not saying it's necessarily slower, because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven't just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it.

“The older car is a bit more stable, grippy, but that is really just one data point. It will be needing more time to really come to more conclusive information. We've put a few months of upgrades into the car, clearly pointing in a direction that we think is advantageous, and maybe we just need to calibrate it a little bit in order to find the right way forward for 2027.”

Although Mercedes dominated the early rounds of 2026 – which helped them build the 151-point advantage they currently hold over Ferrari in the Teams’ Championship – their frontrunning rivals have gradually closed the gap, with the Scuderia, McLaren and Red Bull all claiming race wins.

The upgrade was intended to regain some of that lost performance, but Wolff conceded that putting their resources into one big package could be considered a risky decision.

“I think that we are one of those large organisations that needs to be very careful how and when we spend our cost cap money,” he said. “We felt that the right strategic decision was to work towards a bigger one and then introduce it.

“Obviously, with the risk of if it doesn't work as you've anticipated, it's just quite difficult to dial yourself out and understand why it hasn't worked. So, it's something which we will look at in the future. Maybe we'll do smaller steps, and then if there is a warning light, it's easier to undo.”

His drivers had their own thoughts on Mercedes' latest strategy after Russell clinched P2 in Sprint Qualifying while Antonelli looked to be significantly off the pace, finishing six-tenths down on his team mate in P7.

Understandably encouraged by his performance, Russell said: “I can definitely confirm the old one is not bad. Let’s see what tomorrow brings with Kimi on the upgrade.

“As a team, there’s still nothing telling us that it isn’t working, but it’s a sport driven by the stopwatch, and the stopwatch has not been great for the upgrade yet. Let’s see, and maybe tomorrow’s a different day.”

“I think it's going to be a difficult weekend, unless we can pull something out tomorrow,” added Antonelli. “It's going to be very tricky. I don't really see where we can find seven-tenths [to Max Verstappen], but you never know.

“Maybe tonight, Bono [Peter Bonnington], the engineers, we're going to find something in the car. And for sure, I'm going to try to improve a little bit the driving, and then we'll see tomorrow where we end up.”