Mercedes is taking its unanswered questions to Austin, and it is putting them on both cars.
Those questions all center on the Mercedes F1 upgrade introduced at Sepang this month: a package meant to protect a championship lead and point the way to the team’s 2027 car, which has yet to deliver the speed Mercedes expected.
Two weeks after splitting its drivers between two different versions of the W17 in Singapore, the team has confirmed that George Russell and Kimi Antonelli will both run its latest update package at the United States Grand Prix, October 23–25. Team principal Toto Wolff framed the weekend in the team’s preview in five words: “Austin gives us an opportunity to respond.”
Respond to what, exactly? Not to a crisis in the standings. To the stopwatch.
The leader with a speed problem
Start with the paradox. Mercedes arrives in Texas leading the Constructors’ Championship with 578 points, 134 clear of Ferrari, and has won 11 of the season’s 17 Grands Prix. Antonelli tops the drivers’ table on 340 points, 102 ahead of Russell, with Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton third on 229, according to F1’s official standings as of October 22.
Antonelli can even become champion on Sunday. Per F1’s own permutations, he must win the race, with Russell ninth or lower and Hamilton fifth or lower. The constructors’ title cannot be settled in Texas: by ECN’s arithmetic, even a Mercedes one-two with Ferrari scoring nothing would leave a 177-point lead with 215 points still available over the final five rounds.
The championship advantage remains substantial. The performance advantage is less secure. Mercedes has not won since Russell’s victory in Azerbaijan on September 26, and that came in the car’s previous specification. Max Verstappen has won both Grands Prix since: the Bahrain Grand Prix, run at Malaysia’s Sepang circuit this year after its original spring date was called off, and Singapore, where he also won the Sprint.
What the Mercedes F1 upgrade was supposed to deliver
Mercedes brought its first major update in four months to Sepang. Its FIA car-presentation filing for that weekend lists changes concentrated on the floor, including the diffuser, plus the rear bodywork and rear suspension fairings, each described as adding aerodynamic load or improving airflow to the back of the car.
On paper, more load. On track, not yet more speed. Wolff called Malaysia, where rain delayed the start and shaped the race, the team’s worst weekend of the season, admitting in the team’s race report that Mercedes “were not quick enough, and we were not reliable enough.” Antonelli finished second. Russell retired from third with a suspected power-unit problem five laps from the end.
Wolff has also been candid about the strategy behind the package. Rather than a steady trickle of parts, Mercedes chose to spend its cost-cap development on one larger step. The risk, he told Formula1.com, is that when a big package does not behave as expected, it is hard to work out why, and he suggested the team may favor smaller steps in future.
Singapore: an experiment, not a verdict
So Mercedes ran what Wolff called “two test pilots” in Singapore. Antonelli stayed on the new package. Russell went back to the specification he had raced to victory in Baku.
The early numbers flattered the old car. In Sprint Qualifying, Russell was second and Antonelli seventh, 0.573 seconds slower, and Russell then led Saturday’s Sprint before crashing out. Wolff said the new car seemed “a little more tricky to drive” and the older one more stable and grippy, while cautioning that it was only one data point.
Then the picture moved. In Grand Prix qualifying, Antonelli was 0.185 seconds quicker than Russell, fourth to sixth. (Russell started 19th after a grid penalty for exceeding his allocation of power-unit components.) Antonelli finished third on Sunday, Russell ninth. Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin’s conclusion in the team’s race report: by the end of the weekend, Antonelli’s package was “clearly the faster of the two.”
Read that carefully. It is the team’s assessment, not an independent measurement. Two drivers, different sessions, fuel loads, setups and track evolution mean Singapore was never a laboratory. Mercedes’ own language stayed hedged. After the race, Wolff said the new car needs “a very different set-up philosophy” than its predecessor. Had it delivered the performance the team hoped for? “I don’t think so yet,” he said.
Potential is not the same as speed
That gap is the whole story. An upgrade can promise more aerodynamic performance without making that performance easy for a driver to use. A driver can only exploit it if the car behaves predictably enough to lean on, corner after corner, lap after lap. Antonelli described the problem after qualifying in Singapore, telling reporters, according to Reuters, that the window in which the car works is “very small.”
Russell was blunter after Sprint Qualifying: F1 is “a sport driven by the stopwatch, and the stopwatch has not been great for the upgrade yet.”
In practical terms, Mercedes’ Austin homework comes down to four questions:
- Is the car quick over one lap?
- Is it quick over a full stint on race tires?
- Can both drivers trust its balance?
- Can the team turn engineering changes into a clean, dependable weekend?
Singapore offered encouraging evidence on the first. The other three remain open.
The threat is real
Red Bull is doing the most damage. Across the last triple-header of Baku, Sepang and Singapore, Red Bull scored 102 points to Mercedes’ 75 and Ferrari’s 86, according to F1’s official team results (an ECN tally of weekend totals, Sprint points included). In the two weekends since the upgrade arrived, Red Bull leads Mercedes 69 to 40.
Context matters. Russell’s Sepang retirement and back-of-the-grid start in Singapore cost Mercedes heavily, and neither is an aerodynamic verdict. But Verstappen’s wins came on very different circuits, and Wolff did not play them down. “You need to take your hat off for what Red Bull has done this season,” he said after Singapore, before warning that next year’s fight between the teams will be “full on.”
McLaren, meanwhile, plans further upgrades in Austin, according to Formula1.com. The development race is not pausing while Mercedes learns its own parts.
Why Mercedes keeps pushing
Why not park the package and race the car that won in Baku? Because this upgrade is about more than 2026. Wolff has said Austin will show whether the update truly has more performance, calling that “crucial for the development direction for next year.” In effect, the direction of the 2027 car is being chosen in these races.
The drivers sound aligned. After finishing third, Antonelli said in the team’s race report that Singapore had given Mercedes “a really good direction” and confidence it can improve further in Austin. Russell, who handed back the newer car for the experiment, said the team had gathered “a lot of useful data” on the package. Wolff’s preview avoided promises: the priority, he said, is the weekend in front of the team, executing well and maximizing performance.
Why Austin is a useful test
Austin is a better examination than Singapore for one simple reason: time. Singapore was a Sprint weekend with only one practice session. Austin runs the conventional format with three, giving engineers more track time to chase the set-up window before qualifying.
The Circuit of The Americas is also a broad test. Its 3.43-mile (5.513 km) lap combines a steep uphill run into Turn 1, a fast sequence of direction changes through the first sector and tighter corners in the stadium section. A car that only works in one kind of corner tends to be exposed somewhere around the lap. That is ECN’s analysis, not a guarantee: one weekend, track temperature and tire behavior can still muddy the read.
What would progress look like? Both drivers close to each other on identical cars. Competitive long-run pace in Friday practice. A qualifying result that does not depend on one perfect lap. And a race in which Mercedes is fighting Verstappen rather than managing a deficit.
What would it look like if the package is still fighting back? Big gaps between the drivers, a car that is fast on one run and edgy on the next, and more talk of narrow windows.
Mercedes has the lead. Belief has taken its upgrade to Austin. Now the stopwatch gets its say.
