Toto Wolff isn’t pretending he’s blind to the noise: in the first week of a brand-new regulation cycle, George Russell has already been installed by bookmakers as the man to beat for the 2026 drivers’ title. But in typical Wolff fashion, he’s quick to separate a flattering label from something Mercedes has actually earned on a racetrack.
Asked about Russell being made the odds-on favourite, Wolff didn’t swat it away. He leaned into it — to a point.
“It’s always nice if your driver is the favourite… and I think he deserves it, because he’s one of the best,” Wolff said. “He’s shown us where the performance of the car is, and been overall, more than great to us.”
That last line matters. Russell’s reputation inside Mercedes has been built as much on his feel for extracting a car’s ceiling as on Sundays spent converting it. When a team is stepping into a reset like 2026 — new chassis, new engines, a new set of compromises to learn — having a driver who can consistently point to where time is hiding is its own kind of advantage. It’s also why the paddock tends to attach “favourite” tags to drivers who look like a safe pair of hands at the exact moment everyone’s guessing.
Still, Wolff isn’t buying his own hype, nor is he allowing anyone else to buy it for him.
He stressed that the old equation hasn’t been rewritten by new rules: best driver plus best car still wins championships, and Mercedes hasn’t proven it has the second part nailed yet. Not in the places where it has historically tripped over its own feet.
“We haven’t yet proven that we have a package that is good enough,” Wolff said. “We haven’t been… in Bahrain, with the abrasive tarmac which was always tricky for us.”
That caution feels pointed. Pre-season tests can create their own mythology — and this year’s closed-doors running in Barcelona has already done exactly that. Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari topped verified unofficial times by the end of the five-day test, while Mercedes “allegedly impressed” enough to add oxygen to the growing chatter around its prospects. In the early days of a new era, those impressions can quickly turn into assumptions.
Wolff isn’t playing along. He all but underlined the idea that Mercedes needs to show its hand in more representative conditions before anyone starts talking about titles as an expectation rather than a possibility.
“I’d hope the bookmakers are right,” he said, “but I’ll believe it when we have seen performances that would confirm that.”
That scepticism also framed Wolff’s broader answer when asked whether anything less than a title challenge would constitute failure for Mercedes under this new ruleset. He bristled at the word — not because of lowered standards, but because it ignores how regulation cycles tend to develop.
“Failure is such a harsh word,” he said. “We’re into these regulations for the next few years, and how I’d like is to see the way we’re thinking about it is not always the optimisation on a weekend or a season, but seeing an upward trajectory.”
It’s a notably different tone from the kind of chest-thumping you sometimes hear when teams talk about a new start. Mercedes, after all, lived through an entire ground-effect era unable to mount a sustained title fight. The instinct in the outside world is to treat 2026 as a hard reset and, therefore, a must-hit. Wolff is arguing for something more pragmatic: find the baseline, understand the problems, and build momentum — because there will be problems.
“Whatever the pace is that we’re coming out of the blocks, I’m certain there will be challenges,” he said. “Our own challenges, the relative performance against the others… I’m the glass half empty person. I don’t see any of that. At that stage, I’m wary and sceptical.”
In other words: Russell may be the favourite on paper, and Mercedes may look sharp in snippets, but Wolff wants proof in the only currency that counts.
Alongside Russell, Mercedes will begin 2026 with Kimi Antonelli entering his second F1 season. Wolff’s assessment of the Italian was warm but carefully calibrated — the sort of framing that sounds like internal expectations being set as much as public ones.
Antonelli’s rookie year included a mid-season dip before a strong finish: three podiums by the end of 2025 and a response that clearly impressed the team. Wolff described that first season as essentially tracking the plan Mercedes mapped out: flashes, then the weight of the “circus” — media, sponsors, fandom — and the occasional struggle that comes with it.
Now, he says, the groundwork has been laid.
“There’s no doubt about his speed and about his race craft,” Wolff said. “He’s going into his second season. He knows all the tracks. He knows all of you guys. He knows most of the other requirements. So I’m absolutely certain that it will be a good year for him.”
But Wolff also drew a bright line between “a good year” and “Russell-level week-in, week-out”.
“I don’t think we should expect him to be like George all the time,” he added. “George is one of the best ones. He’s been in Formula 1 a long time. He’s a benchmark, and Kimi is 19, and is going into his second season.”
It’s an honest dynamic — and potentially an important one if Mercedes does emerge with a car capable of fighting at the front. Russell is being talked about as a title favourite because he’s already seen as a finished product: a benchmark driver in his prime. Antonelli, for all the promise, is still on the climb. How steep that climb looks in a reset year may end up shaping Mercedes’ internal story as much as its external one.
For now, Wolff is happy to accept the compliment for Russell — and equally happy to treat it as meaningless until the W17 shows it can handle the tracks that have historically exposed Mercedes. The bookmakers can lead the conversation in February. Wolff would rather join it when the racing starts.
