Revealed: The reasons behind Mercedes’ F1 Canadian GP dominance

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has revealed some of the factors behind his team’s “dominant” 1-3 at the F1 Canadian Grand Prix.

Mercedes avoided their usual heat struggles which have hampered the performance of their W16 as George Russell converted pole position into an impressive victory in Montreal.

Russell kept Red Bull’s Max Verstappen at bay throughout Sunday’s 70-lap race, while rookie teammate Kimi Antonelli claimed his maiden F1 podium in third to secure a double rostrum for the Silver Arrows and cap their strongest weekend so far in 2025.

Asked if there was an explanation to Mercedes’ performance in the hotter temperatures, Wolff joked: “I thought it's when I'm wearing a pullover, there's some kind of correlation with our performances because that means it's cold! And today, 50 degrees track temperature, and we've been dominant.

“We've had some things changing on the car, we have a new rear suspension. I'm really happy how the team has managed that, the trackside team and also back in the factory, how these things have been coming onto the car. But I guess you need to look at the track layout.

“Montreal was always good to us; it lacks the typical high-speed corners where we suffer more in the heat. That's one, and number two is it’s quite a smooth asphalt here, which is less abrasive and therefore less damaging to our car that suffers from rear tyre degradation and overheating.”

HOW MUCH OF A ROLE DID NEW SUSPENSION PLAY?

Mercedes reintroduced the latest version of a new rear suspension layout - which originally debuted at Imola before being dropped - in Montreal. Wolff insisted the change was not the “magic solution” behind the team’s dramatic form turnaround.

“I think we brought the new rear geometry for that particular problem that we had, the rear [tyre] surface overheating, and we weren't quite sure about the results in Imola, because they were worse than we expected, and then taking it off I think was the right thing to do – and bringing it on here, because hopefully the development direction is correct,” Wolff explained.

“In these kind of regulations, you never know whether you land development or whether you don't; correlation has been difficult, particularly for us, but for many other teams, and putting it on here is... I think there are other factors at play here.

“The track layout is just different, the asphalt is different, and there is never one magic solution that makes the car go from a, let's say, best-case podium car to a dominant winner. But the more data sets we have, the more we learn.”

Wolff was quick to downplay suggestions that Mercedes could be the team to beat once more at the upcoming Austrian Grand Prix.

“We've seen it last year that on some tracks, it wasn't even close to who was second, but we dominated throughout the weekend, and that's a little bit the pattern we have seen here,” he stressed.

"Austria is going to be a different ballgame, different track layout, different challenges, so all of our eyes and brains are concentrated on Austria now. This is done, tick the box.”