Mercedes is struggling to understand why its upgrade appears to have taken it backwards rather than forwards at the Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.
Mercedes, dominant leaders in the 2026 championship, had their “toughest Saturday” of the season at Sepang, with Kimi Antonelli and George Russell fourth and eighth, half a second off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen’s pole position.
This is despite Mercedes introducing a major upgrade to its car which, according to pre-event simulations, would deliver a lap time improvement of around three-tenths.
“You expect a gain of 0.3 seconds and it feels like 0.3 seconds, or 0.4 seconds or 0.5 seconds back,” Toto Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
“(This is the) first time we’ve missed the top three by a long shot, so… Weird. But I guess we’ll find a solution.”
Mercedes was also outside the top three in qualifying in Hungary, but with a deficit that is almost half that it faces at Sepang.
So what’s going on? Has the upgrade failed to deliver the expected results, how much of it is down to Sepang’s unique characteristics and can Mercedes hope for better at the grand prix?
Unexpected car behavior
Mercedes was not helped by its toughest Friday of the season so far, as weaknesses it has not suffered from all year emerged.
“We were a little surprised on Friday by some behavior from the car that we hadn’t seen all year,” Wolff explained.
“But it’s very hot and the tarmac is very different from all the tracks. It looked really good in (FP3), we seemed to have, at least with Kimi, taken a step forward in understanding. Then qualifying was a bit back to what we had seen before, just no performance.”
When asked what this undesirable behavior of the car was, Wolff replied: “It looks like we are very dragging, because this is the first time we have lost a lot of time on the straights, especially because of Max (Verstappen).
“Then at low speed, in Turn 2, we’re not able to turn the car. There’s just too much understeer. So overall we haven’t seen things all year.”
The data backs it up: Antonelli lost three of five tenths to Verstappen in low-speed Turns 1 and 2 alone in the third quarter.
Mercedes cannot count on its usual straight line advantage on the back straight and start/finish straight as Verstappen (blue) gains another two tenths over Antonelli (green) from the exit of right turn 14 to the line.
“With this new package, obviously the operating window of the car is different,” Antonelli said.
“We’re trying to understand in which window the car’s performance is best. At high speeds our performance was very good this weekend, but at low speeds that’s where we fell short.”
“Overall, we need to understand why and try to move forward and improve.”
Does the upgrade actually work?
So, does Mercedes’ upgrade work as expected but is it marred by Sepang’s unique conditions (the old tarmac, long-radius low-speed corners), or does the upgrade misfire compared to expectations?
“Well, that’s the big question mark,” Russell said when asked.
“If you could have had a direct face-to-face it would have been great to know, but that’s the challenge of this sport.
“If I had put in the improvement package last week (in Baku), even if it was worse, we probably still would have been on pole and said it was fantastic.
“Similarly, if we had had the old car here, the result might have been even worse. So that’s the challenge.”
“As a team we have yet to have a bad race all season and this was clearly a very poor qualifying for us.”
Russell had taken pole position by more than eight tenths in Baku, the largest pole position margin of the season, but the team still expected Sepang to be more difficult as it is a less favorable circuit for his car.
“Throughout the year, when we rode on tracks like this with very open tarmac, we always struggled,” Antonelli said.
“So is it because of the tarmac and because it’s really hot there? Or is it because maybe we’re missing something with the new package? So it’s really difficult to understand.”
“But we are trying to do our best and Singapore will probably give us a better read of the package.”
Russell described the track surface as “like driving on gravel” and it clearly hurts Mercedes more than the other teams.
There is one element of qualifying that looks worse on paper as Antonelli wasted a set of tires after track limits were removed in Q2, prompting him to race earlier than the others in Q3 on a single set of tires.
“I understeered off the track, but I think with clean qualifying, probably P2, maybe P3 on the road, but not P1,” Antonelli said. “Max was a little too fast for us today.”
But there is undoubtedly still a sense of disappointment at Mercedes with how the start of the upgrade has gone, with Russell calling it the “toughest Saturday of the year” so far.
“All the numbers point to it being an improvement, but obviously this is a sport where we have to go by lap times and not what the numbers say,” Russell said.
“So the numbers look absolutely good and in line with expectations, but the result is not.”
Ultimately, there is no single reason for Mercedes’ struggles, as Wolff said: “There are many factors that we will have to take into consideration, and we cannot rule anything out at this stage.”
There’s not much more Mercedes can do ahead of the grand prix, but with only minor adjustments to the set-up allowed by the parc ferme rules.
“I think we have a good opportunity tomorrow starting on the clean side,” Antonelli said, and he will be third due to Isack Hadjar’s grid penalty for taking a seventh engine of the year.
“But I still believe Red Bull still has the advantage in terms of pace and Ferrari is very close. But we will do our best. I think track position is going to be very important.”
“We will try to manage these tires in the best way possible. And then try, if we can fight for victory, great. If we have to settle for P2 or P3, we will accept it.”
The real challenge for Mercedes will come in the coming days, as it will be to understand exactly why it seems to have regressed.
And he’ll need to optimize this new package, because going back to a previous-spec car isn’t really an option, given that the older-spec parts were very close to the end of their lives, and producing new versions would unforeseenly reduce his strict cost cap allocation.
Gn sports
