Toto Wolff Admits Mercedes ‘Haven’t Got The Money’ to Match McLaren and Ferrari’s Upgrade Pace

• Toto Wolff says Mercedes cannot speed up its car development to counter Ferrari and McLaren’s recent upgrades
• McLaren has won the last two races after bringing updates to the MCL40, while Mercedes has made only smaller changes to the W17 after its last major package at the Canadian Grand Prix
• Kimi Antonelli and George Russell both admit Mercedes is no longer the fastest car on the grid heading into the Italian Grand Prix

Mercedes extended both of its championship leads across the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, yet the team’s advantage on the stopwatch keeps shrinking. After winning the opening six races of Formula 1’s new regulation era, Mercedes has taken just two of the last six races, level with Ferrari and McLaren over that stretch.

Team principal Toto Wolff has now put a number on why the Silver Arrows cannot simply speed up and answer back. “We haven’t got the money to put developments on the car,” he said.

Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead over Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton had stood at 53 points heading into the Zandvoort Sprint, with Russell trailing his Mercedes team-mate by 56. Both gaps grew again across the race weekend, a reminder of just how much ground Mercedes banked early in the season even as its raw pace has faded.

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“We Haven’t Got The Money”

Every team operates under a yearly budget cap governing car spend, raised to $215m for 2026 as part of the sport’s wider regulation overhaul. How that money gets spent across a season is left to each team, and Wolff said Mercedes settled on an even spread rather than a rush of new parts now.

“I said it before that we are trying to evenly split that through the season based on our calculations of when we can bring the biggest updates and optimising the championship points,” Wolff said. “But we just can do what we can do. That’s why it is a development race. If you bring an update, each of the top teams will have a couple of tenths in it, at least, and that’s what we lose.”

McLaren has taken the last two wins after bringing upgrades to the car at each event, first in Hungary and then in Zandvoort. Mercedes, by contrast, has brought only smaller revisions to the W17, with its last major package arriving at the Canadian Grand Prix in late May. Asked whether Ferrari and McLaren simply have deeper pockets to draw from, Wolff replied: “You will see towards the end of the season whether they are going to be able to deploy as much stuff on to the car as they do now. Someone might have a different strategy in spending more at the beginning and then in the middle of the year than towards the end.”

Wolff would not say outright why Mercedes has fallen behind the current pace of its rivals’ upgrades, but he pointed to reliability trouble that cost the team results it had already banked. “Did we spend much at the beginning in the initial development? I don’t think so,” he said. “I just think we’re an organisation and we have a certain size and infrastructure. In that respect, we had a very quick car. We left between 50 to 100 points on the table with reliability issues. That would have given us more of a gap than we have today.”

Retirements in Montreal, Barcelona and Silverstone all cost Mercedes points earlier in the season, part of the reliability run Wolff referenced.

Stella Isn’t Convinced

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella heard Wolff’s comments put to him after Sunday’s race and made clear he isn’t taking them at face value. “I would like to believe you, but I actually don’t believe it,” Stella said.

He pointed to a specific allowance written into this year’s cost cap rules, tied to the incoming 2027 power unit regulations. “Thanks to the 2027 power-unit regulations, all teams will have an allowance in their reporting for the cost cap. If I’m not wrong, it’s $3m that you can use in the 2026 reporting for the cost cap calculations,” Stella said. “And I’m sure that Mercedes, having seen that the rivals are kind of elevating the game, I’m sure they will now cash in on their development that surely is happening in the ground.

“I’m sure their car in the wind tunnel is quite a bit faster than the car they have on track. And they will want to now convert some of this potential into upgrades that make it to the real car. So I’m pretty sure that they will have upgrades. Obviously, it would be good if not, but I don’t even want to think it.”

The Drivers Already Know

Mercedes’ own drivers aren’t disputing the shift in competitive order. Kimi Antonelli finished second at Zandvoort behind Norris, and his overall championship lead over both Russell and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton stretched to 59 points.

“We’re clearly not the fastest car anymore on the grid,” Antonelli said. “We’re probably second or third, at least in today’s race, and McLaren has taken a huge step, especially since Hungary, since the big upgrade package they brought. But I’m confident with the team. You know, the team has been working super hard on this next package that is coming up, and they just want to make sure that it’s going to work out well once we put it on.”

Russell, third at Zandvoort behind his teenage team-mate, drew a direct line between McLaren’s two most recent wins. “I don’t think it’s a major surprise for us, seeing how competitive Lando was this weekend, considering he won in Budapest,” Russell said. “It’s a very similar circuit with the long corners, high tyre degradation, with the two-stop strategy, so there’s a lot of similarities between the two circuits. This may continue for the coming two or three races until we start to bring more to the car, and fingers crossed our competitors don’t.”

A Different Test Awaits at Monza

Formula 1 now heads to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix, a circuit built for outright speed rather than the tyre-management demands of Budapest and Zandvoort. Russell is hopeful the change of scenery works in Mercedes’ favour. “Monza may be slightly different, but I think they [McLaren] are the team to beat right now,” he said, while adding he expects Mercedes “will be slightly more competitive there.”

Whether that competitiveness stretches all the way to victory depends on whether Mercedes can turn its wind tunnel potential into a car on the track, exactly as Stella predicts, before the title fight reaches its final stretch.

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• 2026 Dutch Grand Prix: Norris Beat Antonelli In The Pit Lane, Not On The Track
• George Russell Says Kimi Antonelli ‘Deserved’ to Finish Ahead of Him After Mercedes Team Orders at the Dutch Grand Prix

Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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