Mercedes puzzled by Bahrain upgrade after pace backfired
NXTbets Pro | Published On: October 4, 2026
Mercedes upgrade stalled
Mercedes brought its first major upgrade package since May to the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend, but the new parts did not give the team the lift it expected. The team came in with three straight race wins and looked set for another strong result, yet Toto Wolff said the package seemed to hurt qualifying pace instead. Wolff said the car picked up too much drag on the straights and carried too much understeer in the slow corners, two issues that blunted the balance Mercedes wanted from the update. He said the team had to dig into the data to understand why the change failed on that track and in the heat, even as Mercedes still believed the package itself worked. Wolff called it a case of homework rather than a dead end, and he made clear the team did not have the answers it wanted from Saturday’s running.
Antonelli recovered
Kimi Antonelli turned a difficult session into a strong qualifying result and a podium race, even if the path there was far from clean. He qualified fourth, then moved up to third on the grid after Isack Hadjar’s five-place penalty. Antonelli said a track-limits mistake in Q2 cost him a lap and an extra set of tires, which left him with only one fresh set for Q3 just as the conditions changed. That left him managing the final part of qualifying with less margin than he wanted, but he still put Mercedes in position to score. On race day, Antonelli delivered on that promise and finished second behind Max Verstappen. For Mercedes, that result offered a sharp contrast to the frustration around the upgrade. The car had looked unsettled in qualifying, yet Antonelli still converted the package into a podium finish and kept the team in the fight at the front.
Russell retired late
George Russell’s race ended in the worst way for Mercedes, with a power-unit failure wiping out a likely podium late in the Bahrain Grand Prix. Mercedes was running second and third on lap 50 of 55 when Russell had to stop, and Wolff said the failure cost the team a probable trip to the podium. He described the problem as a power-unit failure and said it was not caused by the safety car. Russell had qualified eighth, and he said Mercedes had not improved after Friday. He also said the circuit was hitting the team’s tires harder than it was affecting other cars, another sign that the upgrade had not delivered the consistency Mercedes wanted. The loss of Russell’s car left Mercedes with one strong finish from Antonelli and one costly retirement, a split result that summed up the weekend. The team expected more from its first major update in months. Instead, it left Bahrain with questions about pace, tire behavior and reliability, plus a clear need to sort through what Wolff called a lot of homework.
