Toto Wolff says Mercedes 'haven't got the money' to match McLaren, Ferrari's current upgrade rate amid F1 title battle
Mercedes' team principal suggests the championship leaders don't have the spending leeway in their approach to 2026's budget cap to immediately counter rivals' currently more regular car updates; watch the Italian Grand Prix at Monza live on Sky Sports F1 on September 4-6
Monday 24 August 2026 18:35, UK
Toto Wolff says Mercedes do not have extra money available to quickly respond to the growing threat from McLaren and Ferrari through car development.
The Silver Arrows continue to lead both world championship races, and grew their leads in both standings across the Dutch Grand Prix Sprint weekend, but have seen their early-season dominance eroded in recent months.
After winning the opening six rounds of F1's new rules era, Mercedes have won two races in the last six, the same number as Ferrari and McLaren.
- F1 2026 standings | F1 2026 calendar | F1 Gossip Column
- Download the Sky Sports app for expert analysis, best video & more📱
- Not got Sky? Latest Sky Sports deals or stream F1 with no contract 📺
McLaren have taken the last two wins after upgrades to their car at each of the last two events, while Mercedes have brought only smaller revisions to their W17 since its last big update at the Canadian GP in late May.
All teams operate to a yearly budget cap governing car spend, which for 2026 was raised to $215m due to the huge change in regulations, and have to decide how they each allocate spend on car development through the season.
Wolff suggested Mercedes' approach to the full year meant they could not accelerate any upgrades - or bring more - to their W17 earlier than already scheduled to counter what their chief rivals were doing.
"We haven't got the money to put developments on the car," he said.
"And 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.
"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.
"The ride has been a bit tougher than at the beginning of the year."
Put to him that Ferrari and McLaren seemed to have the money, Wolff said: "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 did not explicitly state why Mercedes were not able to match their rivals' current rate of bringing upgrades to the track.
He was asked whether they had forward-loaded their development spend to ensure they had started the season and F1's new era of rules most strongly.
They won all six of the opening races - and have still remained a victory contender at most other rounds too - although reliability problems proved costly over the first half of the campaign with the loss of likely big points alone through driver retirements in Montreal, Barcelona and Silverstone.
"Did we spend much at the beginning in the initial development? I don't think so," replied Wolff. "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.
"Other than that, we are continuing to execute that the plan was and what the financial realities mean for us."
When the Mercedes counterpart's comments were put to him after Sunday's race, McLaren chief Andrea Stella said he suspected their Brackley rivals still had plenty up their sleeve for the title run-in.
"I would like to believe you, but I actually don't believe it," said Stella.
"Thanks to the 2027 power-unit regulations [which will see a change in the power ratio], 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.
"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."
Russell, Antonelli hopeful over next Mercedes upgrades
Mercedes' drivers Kimi Antonelli and George Russell finished the Zandvoort race in second and third places respectively behind McLaren's race-winning Lando Norris, who has now won back-to-back events either side of F1's summer break.
Russell said: "I don't think it's a major surprise for us, seeing how competitive Lando was this weekend, considering he won in Budapest.
"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."
Antonelli, who still increased his overall championship lead over Russell and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton to 59 points, added: "We're clearly not the fastest car anymore on the grid.
"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."
The high-speed straights and tight chicanes of Monza at the Italian Grand Prix next week will represent a different challenge for the front-runners compared with the last two venues and Russell is hopeful Mercedes "will be slightly more competitive there".
He added: "Monza may be slightly different, but I think they [McLaren] are the team to beat right now."
Formula 1 heads to Monza for Ferrari's home race at the Italian Grand Prix on September 4-6, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW - no contract, cancel anytime
