Wolff admits Mercedes W15 is ‘on a knife’s edge’ as recent crashes have been a ‘tremendous hit to the cost cap’

Mercedes endured another difficult weekend in Mexico City, with George Russell crashing heavily on Friday – his second trip into the barriers in just over a week. Although Russell bounced back to deliver points on Sunday, finishing in the top five along with his team mate Lewis Hamilton, team boss Toto Wolff didn’t shy away from the problems facing his team heading into Brazil.
Russell’s Mexico City crash came just a week after another shunt in Austin, while Hamilton spun out of the race in the US. While he missed the barriers, Hamilton did damage his car bouncing into the gravel. Juniro driver Kimi Antonelli also had a high-speed crash at Monza.
And Mercedes are now counting the cost of having to make big repairs after each incident, with Russell forced to run a Silverstone-spec floor in Mexico City, having damaged the upgraded version in Austin and the next best option with his FP2 crash at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Under F1’s cost cap rules, the team must absorb the cost of new parts and rebuilds from their existing set budget – meaning less money for car development.
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“Kimi’s crash in Monza, George’s crash in Austin, George’s crash here – I love a driver to push and I’d rather [a] crash and we know what the car is capable of than not,” Wolff said after the Grand Prix.
“In ‘cost cap land’, that is a tricky situation so these three shunts put us on the back foot. And the one we had the day before yesterday was massive. We had to opt for a completely new chassis. That is a tremendous hit in the cost cap.
“So, we probably have to dial down what we put on the car. We will be having two upgrade packages in Brazil – two floors, but that is basically it, nothing else is going to come. We have certain limitation on parts, so we need to be creative, how we manage this. And certainly, there is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car because the answer is [now] zero.”
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The spare parts situation will no doubt be frustrating to Mercedes not just this year, but also potentially hamper the amount of data they can gather with a view to next year’s car – with the 2025 challengers set to be an evolution of this year’s spec before a rules change in 2026.
Despite their issues, both cars came home with a good haul of points – even if Russell had to nurse some damage to his front wing. Hamilton wound up overtaking Russell late on after being stuck behind his team mate for a number of laps – something that raised eyebrows, given Russell was both running an older-spec floor and had that damage.
“When overtaking [Oscar] Piastri after coming out of the pits, he hit the bump and came very close and the amount of turbulence might have played a role, and one of the main front flaps collapsed, so it was a tremendous loss of downforce,” Wolff explained about Russell’s front wing damage.
“George drove very well all weekend. And on the other side, maybe there is something in the aero update package that… causes something that we don’t understand. Because we had two massive crashes in the same corner in Austin, and we had a crash on the old car too, so this car is so on a knife’s edge.”
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Wolff was clear that his drivers are allowed to race each other – and they did so, Hamilton getting Russell off the line, before Russell moved ahead in the opening stint, and then Hamilton returned the favour late on.
“They are so good and so experienced that we allow the racing. At the beginning I had no doubt, there was never a feeling that ‘ah this is getting a bit hairy.’ We made the call to George at the end that Lewis had the fastest car, that maybe that one defence on the straight was a bit of a late move but I don’t have any doubts about the two.”