Mercedes superiority
The second weekend of the 2026 World Championship opened with another clear demonstration of superiority from the Mercedeswho beat all the competition by six tenths in the Sprint Qualifying of the Chinese GP.
The first fight for pole in the Land of the Dragon has rekindled the controversy around the Brackley team and above all that power unit which exploits a compression ratio capable of rising to 18.0 when hot and then dropping to 16.0 (and returning to the parameters required by the technical regulation) when cold. An advantage that makes the W17s fly on the track, which has had the backing of the FIA - an aspect that annoyed Lewis Hamilton, according to whom the World Championship will soon be over.
Wolff’s words
It is precisely on the support of the Federation that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff relies, teasing his rivals thus: “I’ve been in Formula 1 too long not to know that this sport is also a question of politics and how to make the rules advantageous for your team. I’m good at this, but so are others“, this is his comment to The Team. “I think it’s tiring to have someone point at you and snitch when you’ve simply done a better job. They keep going to the FIA to complain, but the FIA tells them that it’s all legal. On the compression ratio, President Ben Sulayem said that it is all 100% legal. It’s an ingenious idea, it respects the rules and has been validated by the FIA. AND even on departures we will do what the Federation says: we will continue like this and we will not complain“.
Among those who turned to the FIA is naturally Fred VasseurFerrari team principal and great friend of the Austrian: “The team principal’s job is also to defend his men, and Fred does that too. Never mind if we clash every now and then. I’ve known him for a long time, he can be as stubborn as me. It’s not funny to do it with a friend, but one day we’ll laugh about it. It’s normal for the situation to be tense, we’re fighting for a World Cup: he may talk nonsense, but he remains my friend“.
