Was Mercedes’ first big F1 2026 upgrade at Canadian GP a success?

Mercedes continued its unbeaten start to the 2026 Formula 1 season after deploying its first major upgrade package at the Canadian Grand Prix.

After rivals McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull all introduced significant upgrades at the previous round in Miami, Mercedes rolled out a sizeable set of updates to its W17 in Canada.

Mercedes went on to lock-out the front row of the grid in Montreal but McLaren was closer to the pace than many expected as reigning world champion Lando Norris wound up third, just 0.151 seconds off pole position.

The Silver Arrows dominated Sunday’s race, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli taking his fourth consecutive victory after team-mate George Russell dropped out with an engine failure.

Antonelli and Russell were able to pull clear of the chasing pack in the first stint despite engaging in an intense battle for the opening 30 laps, and the Italian teenager crossed the line 10 seconds clear of second-placed Lewis Hamilton.

On paper, it would appear that Mercedes’ upgrade was a success. However, the picture is skewed by McLaren’s tyre gamble backfiring, with its act of unintentional self-sabotage ultimately removing Mercedes’ nearest challenger from the equation.

“It didn't bring the performance gains that we had expected on paper, but it's very difficult to assess,” Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff summed up to media including Crash.net after Sunday’s race.

“We didn't see the McLarens today at all. We had the pace, we had the gap, but how much that is, is it what we have anticipated? I think it's very difficult to judge yet.

“Also Montreal was a sweet circuit for us last year, so is that shining a better light on our performance than it would be on any other circuit? Probably Monaco, we won't know it either, so we need to continue to monitor and to analyse.”

Speaking in a post-race debrief video released later, Mercedes chief technical officer James Allison indicated the upgrades did perform as hoped.

“It was a big weekend for us. Key, because it was the weekend where we introduced our first major upgrade for the year and we were looking for it to be strong,” Allison explained.

“It was, but a weekend that was otherwise extremely good from a performance point of view was marred by the disappointment we all feel for letting George down with the reliability of the car.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was encouraged by his side’s performance, despite ultimately making a critical error with its choice of tyre strategy.

“We seem to be within a few tenths of a second off Mercedes, which still remains the best car, but [we had] probably the second best car now, and this was encouraging,” the Italian stated.

But Stella suspects McLaren would not have had the pace to challenge Mercedes for victory even if the race had panned out smoothly.

“I would say that even in a normal race, in a race in which we had no issues, looking at the pace of the other cars that were contending for the podium, I'm not sure that today we would have had this pace, based on the laps that we did when we had the possibility to use the full potential,” he added.