Euphoric and smug all in one swivel of the head, Toto Wolff currently cannot help himself. Just one week into F1’s new era, four years of torturous ground-effect running seem a distant memory now for Mercedes’s long-term commander-in-chief. On Friday, after a third successive perfect competitive session to start 2026, Wolff saw the monitor in front of him, the camera lasered in and turned to face it, smiling wryly. He did the same last week in Melbourne. An early contender for F1 “memeable content” of the season? You bet.
And, really, why shouldn’t he be so merry? Lightyears from the “top four is closely packed” predictions from pre-season testing, Mercedes are currently over the hills and far away. On Friday, George Russell claimed pole position for the sprint race in China, leading home another Mercedes one-two finish with Italian teenager Kimi Antonelli behind him. For the Silver Arrows, it’s been a hat-trick of flawlessness to open up the new campaign.
The next-best? Reigning world champion Lando Norris, McLaren: six-tenths of a second down the road in third. In F1 spiel, especially given that Shanghai represents a roughly average track distance, it is a substantial margin.
Casting an eye further down the leaderboard gives little encouragement to Mercedes’s rivals, at this stage. Only three cars – with the addition of Lewis Hamilton and Oscar Piastri to Norris – were within one second of Russell. Max Verstappen, quite astoundingly, trailed his pole-sitting rival by 1.734 seconds. The Dutchman would go on to say his Red Bull team had an out-and-out “disaster” of a day.
In one respect, it makes for hair-scrunching reading for fans of the sport, eager for another close-run title battle after last year’s three-pronged fight, which went to the wire. Russell, the epitome of cool-headedness now armed with the fastest car on the grid, looks unflappable, safe in the knowledge that not only is his machinery a class apart, but he also has a clear edge in poise and pace over teammate Antonelli, who is in just his second season in the sport.
Yet for those eyeing any sort of early-season solace, there is hope. There are routes to recovery for others. This year, perhaps more than ever, will be a developmental race, such is the uniqueness of the battery-charged power units and the critical energy management component. History shows us, too, that plenty can change as the weeks progress.
Look to 2022 for the most recent example. Red Bull’s first year of supreme dominance with Verstappen did not start with all-conquering lap times; in fact, Ferrari were the leading team in the early stages, with Charles Leclerc winning two of the opening three grands prix. Then, mistakes were made by the Monegasque and his Scuderia outfit. Red Bull found a huge surge in performance. And Leclerc would go on to win only one more race all season.
Even Russell himself has bookmarked the early running four years ago as a warning to his colleagues. “I do like to remind myself, at the start of the 2022 season, Ferrari were well and truly the best,” he told The Independent last week, at the season-opener in Australia. “They won in Melbourne by 25 seconds. By the summer, they didn’t win another race all year.”
There are also looming dates in the diary for the chasing pack to catch up. In all likelihood, there will be a five-week gap between the next race in Japan and the Miami Grand Prix in May, with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia set to be cancelled due to the chaos in the Middle East. That provides ample time for engineers to work closely with their drivers in the simulator, as they crunch all the numbers from the first three rounds.
More pivotally is the start of the European season, this year in June with the Monaco Grand Prix. Round eight – which could become round six – represents the first race after the much-discussed engine compression ratio directive comes into force, placing Mercedes on a completely level playing field with the other 10 teams on the grid.
How much is their current dominance down to this advantage? It remains to be seen. Hamilton, whose nous in the intricacies of F1 politicking have long been underplayed, namechecked the saga last week at Albert Park.
But Mercedes’s power supremacy on the straights – carving out a half-a-second advantage over Ferrari in the final sector in China on Friday – is the difference-maker right now. That being said, a date for curtailment is pencilled in.
And so, hope for the rest, despite the inevitability of the timesheets so far this season. It is foreseeable that Russell could be at least 50 or so points clear of any non-Mercedes driver by the time Monaco arrives. Whether Ferrari’s superb race starts can provide any chink in the armour this weekend remains to be seen. But for now, Wolff is right to be so jolly, sitting mighty high at the top of the sport once more.
