Mercedes won’t be able to run its upgrade on both cars at the Mexico City Grand Prix due to repairs needed after George Russell’s qualifying crash at COTA.
Russell crashed heavily at the penultimate corner on Saturday, damaging the car to such an extent that Mercedes had to change specification and work through parc ferme hours to prepare it for the race. That led to a pit lane start for Russell, and team principal Toto Wolff says there aren’t enough spares of the package introduced last weekend to allow both drivers to run the upgrade in Mexico.
“No, we won’t have [two upgrades],” Wolff said. “We will be missing the floor that needs to go back to the UK and then be repaired for Brazil. So we will be running the specification [separately].
“On Lewis [Hamilton], normally we would have all the parts but I’m not 100% sure that he’s keen on running that. So we’ve got to find out how we want to tackle that weekend.”
Hamilton spun off early in the USGP at the same corner Russell crashed and suggested the car’s handling was a challenge, but Wolff said Mercedes will be sticking with the new parts and trying to understand why its form is fluctuating so much.
“I don’t think we have a fundamental issue on the upgrade, very much,” he said. “I think it’s more interaction on aero and on mechanical stuff, and therefore we’re going to continue with the upgrade. It makes no sense to not, because there’s a lot of lap time you leave on the table, but on the other side you need to be very open-minded.
“George drove the July upgrade [at COTA] because we didn’t have the floor and that seemed pretty competitive in the race. Having said that, if you’re missing a few tenths in qualifying, that makes a big difference because it’s just not as good as it should be.
“So it is more about really getting on top of, why do we have a car that on Friday is by far the quickest – before the [Franco] Colapinto situation – it was four-tenths up and the last sector was just trouble but he would have been quickest, and then on Saturday it’s transformed.
“In the Sprint race, we had a broken suspension. That’s one explanation. We fixed that in the qualifying, nothing would go anymore and we struggled to have pace. [On Sunday] an incident in that corner that came out of nowhere. He was not pushing at all. So where I sit at the moment it’s 100% not Lewis’ fault and that’s not to say that I’m protecting him.
“It’s clear it was gusty, there was a slipstream. How does all of that interact? How does Ferrari come from almost written off before the summer and then turns it around that they have a dominant car finishing one-two? Heads-up by the way to Fred and his team. Really spectacular what they’re doing.”
Mercedes has also announced that its 2025 driver Kimi Antonelli will take part in FP1 on Friday in Mexico City, joining Ollie Bearman at Ferrari and Pato O’Ward in the McLaren as rookies taking part.
