Mercedes Formula 1 team principal Toto Wolff has described drivers Kimi Antonelli and George Russell as “two test pilots” as they operate different car specifications during this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
The Silver Arrows have been the dominant team of 2026, having won 11 of the 16 grands prix held so far, but Red Bull challenged their authority at Sepang during the last round, where Max Verstappen won from pole position.
Antonelli finished as runner-up, with Russell on course for third until a late power unit failure ended his race, all occurring on the same weekend Mercedes fitted a substantial upgrade to the W17.
This was the team’s first major update since Montreal in May, with only race-specific tweaks fitted in between, yet Mercedes failed to maximize the package as Red Bull dominated throughout.
At Marina Bay, Antonelli will continue to run the updated W17 while Russell reverts to the older specification, helping the team determine whether there is a problem with the upgrades or if the previous performance was a one-off occurrence.
“The complication is that we’ve brought a big upgrade to Sepang. Sepang is so tricky and a little bit of an outlier in terms of the temperatures that we’ve seen on Friday and Saturday,” said Wolff.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“With the tarmac being broken or the tarmac being quite open, we kind of didn’t know whether the upgrade wasn’t working as we thought or whether it was influenced, indeed, by the track conditions.
“That’s why we decided to go to Singapore, have two different spec of cars and see what it’s going to do, while knowing that Singapore is an outlier of a track too.
“We’ve done that exercise in FP1. There is a pattern, but most importantly is to really dissect what’s working and what’s not on the old and the new spec and then finding a way forward in picking the best bits and seeing where the development direction needs to get us in order to extract the optimum lap time.
“Now having said that, obviously running two different cars is not always ideal but it’s a compromise we just need to take.
“We have two test pilots at the moment we need to take in order to assure that we’re doing the right thing for next year as well.”
The only practice outing of the Singapore sprint weekend saw Russell go fastest with a 1m32.274s on softs, 1.251s quicker than medium-runner Antonelli in seventh.
George Russell, Mercedes, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
Antonelli was second fastest of those to finish FP1 on the mediums after using hard rubber, 0.519s slower than sixth-placed Verstappen, with Russell quickest by two tenths overall.
“There is a similar pattern that the new car seems to be a little trickier to drive,” Wolff added.
“Not saying it’s necessarily slower because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven’t just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it.
“The older car is a bit even, stable, grippy, but that is really just a little…that’s one data point, that is one free practice session and it will be needing more time to really come to more conclusive information.”
All of this will feed into the German outfit’s preparation for 2027, with focus largely on next season, considering it is on course for its first double championship since 2020.
The debate centres on whether to stick to continuously small upgrades, making it easier to pinpoint what has gone wrong, or to only fit the occasional big update under the $215 million cost cap.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Lillian Suwanrumpha / AFP via Getty Images
“We are one of those large organisations that needs to be very careful how and when we spend our cost cap money,” said Wolff.
“We felt that the right strategic decision was to work towards a bigger one and then introduce it. Obviously, with the risk of if it doesn’t work as you’ve anticipated, it’s just quite difficult to dial yourself out and understand what has not worked.
“So it’s something which we will look at in the future, saying maybe we’ll do smaller steps and then if there is a warning light saying, ‘OK, it’s easier to undo’.
“But there is no clear way at that stage, because so far it has worked. This year, particularly every upgrade we brought on the car, Montreal was a big hit, a big hit in terms of it worked very well.
“So if that didn’t, why? That’s most important question and if we come to conclusions that say this wasn’t as expected, then we have to obviously think for the future.”
