Toto Wolff says Mercedes tried to solve a problem with the upgrade in Imola, but it brought instability and hurt its F1 drivers’ confidence eventually.
Mercedes started off well in F1 2025, scoring good podiums. But things turned a bit down since they brought the update in Imola. George Russell scored a win and points in that period, but Andrea Kimi Antonelli was hurt more and his confidence was lost as he himself admitted to.
In the eight races from Imola, Russell scored two podiums – which included a win in Canada – and had six points finishes. Antonelli had a podium and just two points finishes in the same period, which had four DNFs. In Hungary, they reverted to the old suspension and shed their Imola update.
It brought instant competitiveness as team boss Wolff admitted to as well. He noted that they tried to solve a problem via the update, but it created a new issue altogether. “We tried to solve a problem with the Imola upgrade with a mechanical upgrade,” said the Austrian.
“It may not have solved the issue, but what it did do was let something else creep into the car, an instability that took all confidence from the drivers, and it took us a few races to figure that out. Also, we were misled a little bit by the win in Montreal, which left us thinking that maybe it’s not so bad.
“It [the upgrade] went off [the car], and we’re back to solid form. Upgrades are there to bring performance. A lot of simulations and analysis go into putting parts on the car, and then they’re just utterly wrong. So you need to go back to the analogue world and put it on the car.
“And see what it does, and if it doesn’t do what it what it should, that’s the tricky bit, I guess, for everyone in Formula 1. How do you bring correlation from what the digital world tells you into the real world? That has been a feature, and this is the latest example of how it’s tripped us over,” summed up Wolff.
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Here’s Toto Wolff on George Russell’s deal
