Mercedes has quietly shelved the W16’s upgraded rear suspension — and George Russell couldn’t resist a jab as he explained why. Asked why he coped better with the spec than rookie team-mate Kimi Antonelli, Russell grinned: “Because it’s slower!”
The joke landed because the data backed it up. Mercedes introduced the revised rear end at Imola and, almost immediately, the car lost its poise. What was meant to fix one weakness opened the door to another. Toto Wolff didn’t sugar-coat it in Budapest: “We tried to solve a problem with the Imola upgrade… it let something else creep into the car. That was an instability that basically took all confidence from the drivers.”
The Montreal win muddied the waters — a result Wolff admitted “misled” the team into persisting with the concept. Six race weekends later, they hit undo. The older-spec suspension returned for Hungary, the W16 steadied up, and Russell was back on the podium in third alongside Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. Antonelli, who had worn the brunt of the troubled run, was back in the points.
It wasn’t just Kimi who felt it. “These last six races have been the worst of our season,” Russell said, noting that his style may have disguised some of the upgrade’s nastier traits but didn’t erase them. “At the start of the year, I had much more confidence. The laps were coming easy, whereas now it’s much more challenging.”
There’s a familiar lesson in there. In-season development is always a tightrope, especially with mechanical changes that shift how a car breathes over kerbs and loads the rear axle. Sometimes the stopwatch says yes; sometimes it drags you into the grey area where drivers lose trust and lap time quietly slips away. Russell owned up to the team’s pacing on the decision too: “Maybe we were slightly too slow to react to reversing back to something we knew, but you’ve also got to give it that opportunity in the hope it does bring something.”
The reset keeps Mercedes right in the midfield-versus-frontrunners knife fight. Russell’s Budapest podium helps his season-long scrap with Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc for a spot in the top three of the standings. He sits 15 points behind Verstappen, who holds third, and 21 clear of Leclerc — margins that can swing on one good Sunday.
The takeaway? Mercedes chased performance, found a trap, and climbed out. The W16 on its pre-Imola legs looks a safer, faster proposition — and, crucially for its lead driver, one he trusts again.
