Mystery about Mercedes upgrades: “We don’t have the money”

– Mercedes’ lead has melted away. While the Silver Arrows won the first six races of the 2026 Formula 1 season all in a row, the field has since closed up. Of the following six races, Mercedes only won two, with McLaren and Ferrari also each triumphing twice.

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Both pursuers owe this, among other things, to various update packages that have been brought to the car since then. Mercedes, on the other hand, has been rather cautious so far regarding new parts, which team principal Toto Wolff justifies with financial circumstances.

Due to the cost cap, “we are all simply restricted to a certain degree,” he explains on Sky and emphasizes: “We don’t have the money to bring developments to the car.” However, this statement raises questions.

Because if Mercedes really lacks the money for new parts, why were Ferrari and McLaren able to pursue a significantly more aggressive update plan? “I have already said that we try to spread it evenly over the season,” Wolff explains.

“Some may pursue a different strategy and spend more at the beginning and middle of the year than towards the end,” says the team principal. That means: McLaren and Ferrari might run out of money at some point, while Mercedes still has a bit more financial leeway.

“We will see if they can still bring as many updates to the car at the end of the season as they do now,” says Wolff and explains that Mercedes plans its own updates “based on our calculations, […] how we can optimize championship points.”

Why Stella doubts Wolff’s portrayal

“But we simply can’t do what we can’t do,” he makes clear. A statement that Andrea Stella, however, does not buy. The McLaren team principal assumes that Mercedes does have the means to bring new parts to the car more regularly.

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“I am sure that the car in the wind tunnel is significantly faster than the one they have on the race track, and that they now want to convert part of this potential into upgrades that make it to the real car,” emphasizes Stella.

“So I am pretty sure they will have upgrades. Of course, it would be good if that were not the case, but I don’t even want to think about that,” says the McLaren team principal, who also refers to additional financial leeway through an adjustment of the cost cap.

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Because the rules for the 2027 season are being adjusted again, each team has received an additional three million US dollars, which may be used either in 2026 or 2027. Accordingly, Stella is sure that Mercedes should still have some room under the budget cap.

The number of updates to the cars has already been a topic several times this year. Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies, for example, has also said that it is “hard to imagine” that his team can maintain the development pace after some major updates before the summer break in the second half of the season.

And Toto Wolff attacked Ferrari in June when he said: “In my opinion, they should soon run out of money, the budget cap money, because we couldn’t do it like that. We simply lack the buffer under the cost cap to bring as many parts as they do.”

Mercedes is currently still planning a major update for the Grand Prix of Bahrain in Malaysia in October. Therefore, one must “wait a few more races” for new parts, says Wolff.

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