F1 News: Wolff admits recent upgrade ‘ruined’ the Mercedes car

(GMM) With George Russell and Kimi Antonelli effectively now locked in for 2026, there was a clear sense of relief within the Mercedes camp after a breakthrough Hungarian GP.

Russell, who secured another strong result in Budapest after a recent team performance slump, was calm when asked about when he might get a new contract to sign.

“I have to be honest, I’m going straight on vacation tonight,” he smiled. “I’m going to take ten days off.”

Behind the scenes, the team is preparing to move forward with both drivers – a move that will come as a particular relief to Antonelli, who has endured a bruising rookie campaign.

The 18-year-old was in tears at Spa, having struggled for weeks with a new rear suspension concept introduced at Imola. At the Hungaroring, Mercedes finally reverted to the earlier layout – and both pace and confidence returned immediately.

“It shouldn’t really happen that an upgrade would ruin the car like this,” team boss Toto Wolff admitted. “In the end, we came to the conclusion that the update had to go – and now the car is back in solid shape.”

Wolff said the suspension introduced at Imola will now “end up in the trash”.

“All the clever people, all the simulations, the infrastructure we have, and then it leads you to a car architecture that is simply wrong. We tried to solve one problem, and that made something else significantly worse. We’ve now fixed all that.”

“We were also misled by the attitude that ‘maybe it’s not so bad after all,'” he added.

With that clarity, Mercedes has now shifted its full focus to the 2026 project.

“Everything is geared towards next year,” said Wolff. “Now we know that we have a more stable platform.”