Mercedes’ Team Principal, Toto Wolff expects the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix to be a “real test” of the car’s performance.
Wolff’s Silver Arrows are arriving in the Catalonia region of Spain with victory in eight of nine total races this season – having won all six Grands Prix and two of the three sprint races except for the Miami Sprint which McLaren’s Lando Norris won.
This weekend however marks a return to the scene of where the season began with the first pre-season test in January for every team except Williams, with Wolff feeling that Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya marks a challenge in terms of understanding their progress since.
“Barcelona is a more traditional, and therefore representative, circuit; it’s a real test of a car. It has a long straight and a mix of high, medium, and low-speed corners, so after two Sprint weekends and Monaco, it should give us a better read on our performance.
“It will be the first weekend where we can understand more clearly our recent updates and where we sit relative to the rest of the field. We need to see how the car behaves, whether the performance is there, and whether we can extract it. Until then, we should be careful not to draw too many conclusions from recent races,” acknowledged Wolff.
Wolff proceeded to explain that his two drivers are in different places psychologically with Andrea Kimi Antonelli having won the last five Grands Prix, which has given him a 66-point lead over Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton whilst George Russell is a further two points behind Hamilton.
“Kimi will naturally take confidence from Monaco, but the focus has to be on continuing to build and doing the job in Barcelona.
“For George, the last races have not gone his way, but that is part of racing. He is very strong mentally, we know the level he can deliver, and he has the right people around him. The objective is simple: reset, focus on the weekend ahead, and put together the performance we know he is capable of.”
Antonelli however won’t participate in FP1 due to Mercedes electing to use this weekend as a chance for Antonelli to conduct the first of his mandatory two FP1 skips across the season, with reserve driver – Frederik Vesti jumping into the machinery.
Wolff though is confident that Vesti will extract the best possible performance to further consolidate his development work behind the scenes into real-life data gathering on the actual racetrack.
“Fred will also drive Kimi’s car in FP1. He has been an important part of our development work with the W17 and in helping us understand how to unlock more from the package. This session is a good opportunity for him to connect that simulator work with the real car, and for us to gather another useful data point as we keep working to improve.
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