Mercedes W17 upgrade ‘big question mark’ pinpointed after Bahrain GP setback

SEPANG – Mercedes brought its upgraded W17 out to play at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, but qualifying featured an unexpected wobble.

Max Verstappen dominated for Red Bull on his way to a first pole position of the season. Mercedes could not find a lap to break into the top three. Sepang is throwing up various curveballs, so George Russell admits that the “big question mark” is how much of this is a genuine struggle to extract from the package, versus a natural learning process.

True Mercedes W17 upgrade read a ‘challenge’

The Silver Arrows brought various aerodynamic revisions to Sepang, but over one lap of the circuit, performance was lacking.

Championship leader Kimi Antonelli fell half a second short of Verstappen’s pole time of a 1:35.130. Russell managed only P8. An Isack Hadjar grid penalty, the Red Bull driver having taken a new internal combustion engine, boosts each Mercedes driver one place on the grid, Antonelli to third and Russell P7.

Russell was asked by PlanetF1.com and others following qualifying whether he knew why the race weekend is proving more difficult for his team than expected.

“No, to be honest.

“This circuit is a bit of an outlier in terms of the abrasiveness of the tarmac.

“The lap times seven years ago were about six or seven seconds faster, and at certain points on the track, it feels like you’re driving on gravel, which is the same for everyone. However, it’s clearly affecting us more than others.”

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff stressed that the team continues to believe in its upgrade package, but must investigate why the results did not arrive in Bahrain GP qualifying.

Russell was therefore quizzed on the balance between struggling to extract this performance that the team sees, versus the normal learning stages of an upgrade, especially considering the additional complications from the track which the Brit mentioned.

“Well, that is the big question mark,” he admitted. “If you could have done a direct back-to-back, it would have been great to know.

“But that’s the challenge of this sport. If I put the upgrade package on last week, even if it was worse, we probably still would have been on pole, and we’d have been saying it was fantastic.

“Equally, if we had the old car here, maybe the result would have been even worse. So that’s the challenge.

“As a team, we have yet to have, let’s say, a bad race this whole season, and this was clearly a very bad qualifying for us.”

He added on the W17 package: “All the numbers say it’s an improvement. But obviously, as a sport that we need to follow the lap times and not what the numbers say…

“The numbers look absolutely fine and in line with expectations.

“However, the result wasn’t.”

Looking ahead to the race, Russell expects that “race pace will be king” with very high tyre degradation expected, meaning qualifying is “not the be-all-and-end-all” for Mercedes’ race weekend.

On the other side of the garage, Antonelli felt that with a “clean qualifying” he could have secured a spot on the front row, though conceded that “Max was a bit too quick” to have been challenged for pole.

Red Bull has the “upper edge” on race pace, Antonelli believes, while “Ferrari is very close”.

Yet, the championship leader is optimistic that he can feature in the victory conversation.

“Definitely, there’s a lot of learning that we need to make about this package,” he added.

“I think the track doesn’t help as well because the tarmac is so rough and it’s so hot that the tyres are out of the window after two corners. So we’re just sliding around, and it’s making our life difficult to understand this package.

“But we have a big opportunity tomorrow to score good points. Hopefully even fight for the win.”

PlanetF1.com asked Antonelli whether he was experiencing new behaviour from the W17, with its upgrades, as Wolff had suggested.

“With this new package, obviously the window of the way the car operates is different. We’re trying to understand in which window the car performance is best in the high-speed corner and low-speed corner.

Latest Bahrain GP talking points on PlanetF1.com

Mercedes launches W17 upgrade review as new behaviour emerges

Max Verstappen’s pole verdict on Red Bull’s Sepang breakthrough

“I think our high-speed performance has been very strong this weekend. We were very quick in the high speed. But in the low speed is where where we have lacked.

“So we need to understand why and try to move on and improve.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Read next – Revealed: Mercedes takes up 2026 development path abandoned by McLaren