Mercedes boss admits team is baffled by failed 2026 F1 upgrades
When the Mercedes opted to run an aggressively divided garage for the Singapore Grand Prix Sprint weekend, the goal was simple: gather enough side-by-side data to finally understand why their highly anticipated aerodynamic upgrade failed in Malaysia. Instead, the radical split-specification test has only plunged the factory deeper into utter confusion. Following Friday’s Sprint qualifying ...…
The Mercedes AMG Petronas Formula One Team found themselves baffled after their highly anticipated aerodynamic upgrade failed during the Singapore Grand Prix Sprint weekend. The team opted to run an aggressively divided garage, with George Russell driving the older aerodynamic package and his teammate Andrea Kimi Antonelli running the new, supposedly faster upgrades.
However, Russell secured a front-row starting position while Antonelli struggled with vehicle balance and qualified in seventh place. Andrew Shovlin, the trackside engineering director for the team, expressed deep concern over the fact that the older car outperformed the new update, confirming that the team's wind tunnel correlation was fundamentally flawed.
Despite Russell's impressive performance on the front row, the Mercedes pitwall is far from celebrating, as the team now faces a challenging task to understand why the update is not delivering the expected performance improvements.
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