Toto Wolff warns Mercedes problem could cost Antonelli the F1 title
Wolff wasn't a happy man in Sepang (Photo: Race Pictures)
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Toto Wolff has warned that Mercedes' reliability problems could still decide the 2026 title, even with Kimi Antonelli 84 points clear.
George Russell's power unit failure at Sepang came on the same day Antonelli finished second, but the Mercedes boss made clear that the car leading the championship has the same weakness.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, Wolff praised Antonelli's race before turning to what worries him most. "He [Antonelli] scored a few more points than Lewis behind him, and I'm happy because he did the job," he said
A championship is quickly turned around against you or for you if you have a DNF, and that's why that can't continue.- Toto Wolff
The words "or for you" matter. GPblog has already covered what Sepang meant for Russell, who said after the race that his title chances were all but gone. Wolff's warning points at the other side of the garage: a single retirement for the leader could reopen a fight that now looks settled.
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Four reliability DNFs for the W17
Sepang was no one-off. It was the third engine-related issue to force one of the W17s to retire from a race this season, and the team's fourth reliability-related DNF overall.
- Canada: Russell retired while leading the race. Motorsport.com reported the failure was linked to Mercedes' battery.
- Barcelona: Antonelli's W17 went into electrical shutdown with three laps to go while he was running second. Formula 1's website said it was his first retirement of the season, and Mercedes again traced the cause to the battery.
- Sepang: Russell stopped with a suspected power unit failure five laps from the end, during the second Safety Car period, while running third.
After Barcelona, technical director James Allison said on the team's Silver Arrows Radio Show that the failures "do sort of originate in the same broad part of the battery."
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Wolff has never called the lead safe
This is not a new worry. After Barcelona in June, Wolff told Sky Sports F1: "We just can't compete for a championship if every second race a car is losing fat points."
He said much the same after Antonelli's win in Madrid, when the lead was 81 points. "We've seen that the car and the power unit are a little fragile," Wolff said. "So you have 1 or 2 DNFs and things look completely different."
Sepang showed how quickly it happens. Russell put it in numbers himself: "Instead of losing three points to Kimi today, it turned into 18." If the same thing happened to Antonelli in Singapore and Russell won, the 25 points for the victory would cut the gap from 84 to 59, with six races still to run.
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Pace is a problem too
Reliability is not Mercedes' only concern going to Singapore. The team brought its first major upgrade since May's Canadian Grand Prix to Sepang, but it did not produce the expected gain in lap time. Wolff said going back to the old specification was "not out of the question," and Antonelli said Friday practice in Singapore could be used to compare the two packages.
Wolff said the reliability problem is in good hands: "James [Allison, technical director] is really fully on top of it with his leadership team," he said. The next seven races will show whether Antonelli's lead holds up.
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