Opinion

Who slept best last night: Toto Wolff

Mercedes is back on top again: there’s no guarantee it’s going to be a complete 2014 repeat just yet - but Toto Wolff has certainly enjoyed the season’s opening race

We saw that coming, didn’t we?

As hard as Mercedes tried to take as many sandbags on board its W17 during the tests, it was still clear Toto Wolff’s team was cooking something good. Forget about lap times and one-lap performance - just the fact that Kimi Antonelli completed his first race simulation on the second day of running during the Barcelona shakedown told you enough to understand the Silver Arrows showed up to 2026 F1 prepared and armed.

Then there were these childish games with people dressed in kits with three-pointed star shirts and race suits trying to convince the public through the press it’s actually Red Bull who came up with the best engine on the grid.

Yeah, sure. Did anyone actually fall for that?

It all became more or less clear on Friday in Melbourne, with George Russell’s long runs being scary enough to sober those who believed Wolff and co during February. Sandbags came off completely on Saturday, with Russell killing the opposition with a massive 0.8s gap to the nearest non-Mercedes driver.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes W17

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

Even back in 2014, at the start of what would become years of Mercedes domination, the gap to the nearest rival – funnily enough, also a Red Bull rookie in Daniel Ricciardo back then – was a tiny 0.217s. And in the race itself only one of the Mercedes cars actually made it to the finish, with Lewis Hamilton retiring after just two laps with an engine issue.

Yet, despite all the differences in details, it feels pretty much like F1 is back in 2014: at the start of a completely new era - with new hybrid engines introduced back then - Mercedes is dominating against the backdrop of a general outcry, led by pretty much all non-Mercedes drivers, about how broken this new Formula 1 is.

You’d even wonder if Mercedes has kept a couple of sandbags on board.

Back in 2021, appearing on the Beyond the Grid podcast, former Mercedes tech boss Paddy Lowe revealed that his and Wolff’s team were even trying to hide how much performance they had at hand at the start of its previous era of domination.

"The thinking was if Mercedes had looked ridiculously good, then something would be done about it... there was a lot of tension over how good to look,” he said. "In qualifying, we would never turn the engine up for Q1 and Q2. It was run in a sort of idle mode.

"The debate would then be how much to turn the engine up for Q3. I’d be getting it in the ear from Toto: 'That’s too much, that’s too much'. And I’m thinking 'but if we don’t get pole, we’ll look like a right bunch of mugs'."

"Through most of 2014, that engine was never on full power for qualifying," he added.

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

Wolff didn’t like that statement back then: “I think Paddy must have been in a different place than I was,” - he responded. But he’d probably have a good reason to play it down, even if Lowe told the truth, wouldn’t he?

The only finishing Mercedes - of Nico Rosberg - in Australia 12 years ago crossed the finish line 25 seconds earlier than Ricciardo, who’d then be disqualified. It was crystal clear Mercedes would walk away with both titles that year.

But is it as clear now?

Last Sunday, the gap was much smaller than that. More so, you can’t help but think Ferrari let Mercedes off the hook by eliminating its drivers from contention for the victory with a routine strategic blunder - during the VSC the red team’s mechanics were probably left in a John Travolta meme state, wondering why not even one of the cars came into the pits. Still, for most of the opening phase of the race the Scuderia, thanks to rocketship-style starts too, looked like it was in a position to spoil Wolff’s party.

Even if the Mercedes cars left the pit late on Sunday with some sandbags still attached to them, the race in Melbourne showed they’d probably need to drop them too. At least for now, the 2026 campaign doesn’t seem like it’s going to be as easy as the 2014 one.

It’s not only Ferrari that Wolff and co need to be mindful of. Mercedes’ own customers at McLaren have clearly been caught off guard by how different the performance of the HPP product is in the works team cars - and they’ll still need to spend some considerable time to figure all that stuff out.

Being a works team does matter at the start of a new regulations cycle. Well, unless you’re partnered with Honda - which is still consistent if we draw parallels to a decade ago.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Mark Horsburgh / LAT Images via Getty Images

Anyway, it would be foolish to write the papaya team off - if anything, McLaren proved in recent years there’s no other team on the grid that can develop the car quicker. They will improve.

And so will Red Bull, too.

Back in August last year, during an entertaining media session with a bunch of Dutch journalists, Wolff was talking about how big of a mountain there is in front of Red Bull and its newly formed powertrain division. “They are going to be shit,” he even joked less than six months before describing the Milton Keynes-built engine as “benchmark”.

Red Bull’s own Australian Grand Prix turned out to be a difficult one, with Max Verstappen crashing out in Q1 and Isack Hadjar retiring early in the race. But even if not “benchmark”, that Red Bull PU with a Ford sticker attached to it certainly isn’t “shit”. And to write off Verstappen would be an even bigger mistake. He may feel emotionally disconnected from his new car - but he’s not going to loosen his grip on F1, even if the world of GT now interests him more.

Then, come summer, the FIA is going to shut the loophole in the engine regulations, too.

But all that is something Wolff is probably going to allow himself to worry about another day. Today, he can certainly feel great about getting back to the position he enjoyed so much before 2022 arrived.

George Russell, Mercedes

Photo by: Anni Graf - Formula 1 via Getty Images

On Sunday evening, when facing the media after the race, he diverted from answering the very first question, which was about the threat from Ferrari.

“Most importantly,” he stated, “it feels really… there's so much contentment that I feel in the team at the moment. We've had such a winning streak with these eight championships - and then very difficult years.

"We still won races and finished second in the championship, but a solid one and two where you feel a season ahead that means you can fight for a world championship - that wasn't for a long time, and therefore you're probably more grateful when you bounce back like this, having known the difficult years and just continuing. That's why I'm just very happy for everyone.”

Mercedes is certainly back. The question now is - can they turn it into more years of dominance?