Toto Wolff makes clear ‘nothing to gain’ verdict for Mercedes as 2026 reset looms

Mercedes “cannot write off” the F1 2025 championship, Toto Wolff ruling out talk of compromising next season to get a march on 2026 when all-new cars will be on the grid.

Despite winning three Grands Prix during a mid-season resurgence, Mercedes have lost ground to F1’s leading trio since Formula 1 returned from the summer break with the Dutch Grand Prix.

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The drivers have managed just one podium in eight starts with George Russell fortuitous at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix when a late crash for Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez elevated him from fifth to third.

Scoring just 63 points since Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Belgium, Mercedes have dropped off the back of Ferrari in the race to finish third in the Constructors’ Championship , trailing by 112 points.

Mercedes aren’t the only team that’s experienced a change in fortunes with Red Bull winless in eight, while in sharp contrast McLaren’s form has surged as the Woking team has won four of the last six to race to a 41-point lead in the teams’ standings.

“This variance in performance from race to race, or over a few races, is very difficult to compute, because what looks like an unchanged car can go from race winning to P6,” Wolff said in an interview with Autosport .

“The only team that is not a victim of that is McLaren, who I think have such a solid baseline and a less narrow window than all of us, that they’re able to keep the performance stable.

“All of the others bounce between exuberance and depression. Before the summer, everyone wrote off Ferrari. But they have come back very strong.

“Before the summer, it was Mercedes who was the leading team, and clearly not today anymore. So it is so intricate to identify those performance contributors that at times even that most clever people are lost.”

It has Wolff conceding Mercedes are at a bit of a loss as to how to improve the car to make it quicker.

“We were before the summer [break] pretty clear where the performance came from,” he said, “and today we are less because what everyone seems to find out is that more downforce doesn’t always translate into better lap time.

“Now, this is not the sensational news of the century, but it is the interaction between track, temperatures, tyres, balance, aerodynamics, and driver impulse, so many variables, that if you get all your ducks in one line, you are fast.

“And if there is just one factor that is out of line, you can look quickly very bad.”

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Mercedes ‘cannot write off’ 2025 to focus on 2026’s all-new cars

With only 180 points still in play this season, Mercedes are unlikely to improve on their fourth place in the standings unless they go on a race-winning run and that’s coupled with Ferrari imploding.

Yet to fully grasp the ground-effect aerodynamic cars that were introduced in 2022, Mercedes have the opportunity to capitalise on that reset that will be made in 2026 when Formula 1 introduces smaller and lighter cars.

Under the 2026 technical regulations, Formula 1 will also reduce the impact of ground effect on the cars by introducing active aerodynamics on the front and rear wings that are expected to reduce drag.

Mercedes though, will not write off 2025 in order to focus their full attention on the 2026 car with the teams allowed to start work on the aerodynamic elements of those cars on 1 January 2025.

“This is the crux of the matter every year, and especially if you have such a big regulatory change, are you going to compromise one year or the other?” said the Austrian.

“But I’d like to take it from Niki’s [Lauda] motto, when being asked. ‘Would you rather win this one or the next one?’ And he says, ‘Both.’

“Sometimes it is much less complex than one thinks. Probably the transition of people and capability into the 2026 regulations is going to happen a bit earlier than it would under stable regulations, but it’s not going to be game-changing.

“Nobody’s going to switch the machines off in January, unless you are really nowhere. But there is nothing to gain, because between P10 and P7 doesn’t make a difference for us anyway. We are fighting for victories and podiums, and cannot write it off.”

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