Mercedes makes alarming admission about biggest F1 2026 weakness
Mercedes admits its reliability has not been good enough in F1 2026.
Toto Wolff says Mercedes “can’t compete for a championship” with its current level of Formula 1 reliability woes after Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s late retirement at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix.
Antonelli’s W17 suddenly shut down with a suspected power unit problem shortly after overtaking Mercedes team-mate George Russell for second place in Sunday’s race at Barcelona.
Both Antonelli and Russell have now lost major points as a result of two race-ending mechanical failures, with Russell dropping out while leading the Canadian Grand Prix last month.
In addition to the works’ team’s issues, customer squads McLaren, Alpine and Williams have also encountered problems throughout the early part of the 2026 season.
"We just can't compete for a championship if every second race a car is losing fat points. It's one and then the other and to finish first, first you have to finish. That's just not good enough," Wolff told Sky Sports F1.
Speaking to media including Crash.net on Sunday evening in Barcelona, Wolff added: "You see a DNF robs you of 25 points and it's wide open.
"That's why we can't afford to not finish. We need to just keep putting performance on the car and power unit, not make mistakes, be clever with the strategy and stay absolutely on it.”
Antonelli’s retirement saw his championship lead over Lewis Hamilton, who claimed a dominant first win for Ferrari in Spain, down to 41 points. The Italian teenager is 50 clear of third-placed Russell.
Mercedes is yet to get to the bottom of Russell’s failure in Montreal because his battery is still heading back to its Brackley base via sea freight. The team was also unable to immediately identity the cause of Antonelli’s retirement.
"We don't know yet what was the cause of the failure,” Wolff conceded. ”Most of the others were battery-related. But different failures. It was not always the same.
"So we need to understand what it was. But clearly the symptom was quite similar with the car, like George in Montreal, where the car just switched off.
"We will be really digging deep to make sure that this doesn't happen again.”
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