Wolff tells critics to ‘hide’ as Miami thriller exposes Mercedes pressure

Toto Wolff has told F1’s critics to “hide” after a thrilling Miami Grand Prix put Mercedes under real pressure for the first time in 2026.

Formula 1 returned from its enforced spring break with a Sprint weekend at the Miami International Autodrome for round four of the F1 2026 championship.

Mercedes dominance shaken as Wolff hails Miami as ‘great advertising’

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Although Mercedes had dominated the early rounds of the championship, the break allowed rivals to focus on updating their cars. Ferrari brought a whopping 11 new parts to the track, while McLaren and Red Bull both introduced seven.

There were also minor changes to the energy management regulations, with the maximum permitted recharge reduced from 8 MJ to 7 MJ for qualifying. For the grands prix, the maximum power available for boost mode was capped at 150kW and the MGU-K deployment was limited to 250kW in some parts of the lap.

McLaren won the Sprint in a 1-2 ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, marking the first time Mercedes failed to win this season. The Brackley squad did bounce back on Sunday when Antonelli converted his pole position into a third successive grand prix win.

The Italian, though, was pushed all the way to the line by Sprint winner Lando Norris, with Piastri making it a second podium double for McLaren for the weekend.

With five different drivers leading the grand prix, Wolff dares anyone to criticise the Miami race.

“If there’s one single person that has complaints about the race, I think they should hide, honestly,” he replied to a question posed by PlanetF1.com after the Miami Grand Prix.

“Now, obviously, this track is a little bit easier. It’s not so energy-stuffed. There’s good games, and there’s bad games. So I think that was great advertising for Formula 1.”

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Mercedes was outscored for the first time this season as the Brackley squad fell three short of McLaren’s tally, 45 to 48.

Although Ferrari remains a buffer between the two, 70 points behind Mercedes and 16 ahead of McLaren, Wolff is wary of last year’s championship winners.

“When it comes to the competitive order, it swung,” he admitted.

“We’re still holding on to it, but the McLarens have made a big step. Red Bull on pure pace were massive in qualifying, I guess the strategy didn’t really play well for them. In that respect, it wasn’t easy at all.

“So we just got to keep developing because this is a development race throughout the season and see how our upgrades are going to work in Montreal.”

He also admitted that Mercedes made life difficult for itself on Friday with its energy management decisions on the Friday, and had to recover from that.

“I think that we over-complicated our life with where we wanted to put the car and the power unit in terms of energy management, and we realised that we just needed to go back to something more conventional, “he said.

“You saw we lost three, four tenths against McLaren and most of the others in sector one. We fixed that, and that brought the performance spectrum.”

Mercedes will head to Montreal in two weeks with its bigger upgrade, having opted to only introduce two new parts in Miami due to it being a Sprint weekend with only one practice.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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