Jun.15 (GMM) Toto Wolff has admitted Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton are now genuine championship threats as reliability concerns mount at dominant Mercedes.
Although George Russell was pleased to claw back 18 points to championship leader Kimi Antonelli in Barcelona, the result came only after the young Italian retired ahead of him with yet another power unit-related problem.
The failure continued a worrying trend for Mercedes and its customer teams despite the marque’s dominance of the 2026 season.
“Obviously for us as a team and as HPP, we’ve had a few failures recently, so that’s a big concern for us,” Russell admitted.
Antonelli is equally concerned after losing his latest opportunity to extend his lead – which has now shrunk to 50 points over Russell.
Hamilton is a further 9 points ahead of Russell in P2.
“It’s a bit of a worry because we’ve had several problems this season,” said Antonelli, 19.
“Our package is very good. We just need to work on it because we lose a lot of points in these kinds of races.”
The retirement was especially costly with Hamilton racing to his first Ferrari victory, continuing the momentum generated by the team’s major Barcelona upgrade package.
“The Ferrari car is very reliable,” Antonelli warned. “I think if they continue to perform like this, they will be a threat.”
Mercedes boss Wolff agrees.
“They are undoubtedly title rivals,” he said.
“Lewis is clearly on a roll and in a mental state where he feels very strong, something I’ve appreciated for 12 years.”
The Austrian also believes Mercedes may have thrown away any chance of challenging Hamilton in Montreal by refusing to issue team orders between Russell and Antonelli before the latter retired.
“Today would have been the time to do it because there was a battle with Ferrari,” Wolff said.
“I think we lost the race today because we didn’t want to issue a team order. It’s an issue we’ll have to address, and we’ll talk to the drivers about how to manage these matters in the future.”
More fundamentally, however, Wolff is alarmed by the recurring technical failures.
“Clearly there is a problem with the power unit,” he admitted. “It can’t happen when you’re fighting for a world championship that you have alternating retirements with the same car.
“I’m not happy about anything today.”
Ferrari, meanwhile, is preparing further upgrades.
According to Auto Motor und Sport, thanks to the ADUO concessions, work is continuing on the Maranello team’s next power unit specification, with engineers focusing on increasing intake temperatures even further.
Ferrari engineers reportedly believe the first engine upgrade could halve the current horsepower deficit to the class-leading benchmark – which they believe to be Mercedes rather than Red Bull-Ford despite the FIA’s disputed ADUO ranking.