By: Four-time world champion Max Verstappen has won the last two races of the season in succession, while Mercedes has appeared to struggle somewhat with its upgrades between Kuala Lumpur and Marina Bay.
But how much truth is there in that picture? Is Red Bull genuinely on the rise, or has the team from Stuttgart reached a dead end?
It is a fact that Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren are all making performance gains in F1 at the moment. Some are taking bigger steps than others, but all are on a positive trajectory. Mercedes, however, has seemed a little more human and rather less otherworldly over the past two races, since introducing its most substantial upgrade package at the Bahrain GP in Malaysia.
Mercedes uses GPs as tests, and Singapore may not have been the only one
There may, however, be an explanation for all this. For now, team principal Toto Wolff is placing all the blame on the upgrades. The changes introduced with the new package were so radical that the engineers need time to understand how to optimise the new car. After Singapore, the Stuttgart-based team's boss said they even need to adopt a new philosophy in order to find the best set-up (read here).
This is certainly an aspect that must be taken into account, but Wolff is blatantly and knowingly lying to us. How can a car that demolished the opposition at Monza with Antonelli and in Azerbaijan with Russell suffer such a collapse at certain GPs? Every top team has claimed at least two wins this year, but none of Red Bull, Ferrari or McLaren has ever won by blowing its rivals away. Mercedes has a margin in hand and occasionally takes advantage of it to conduct tests, as it did in Singapore. It was the only weekend in which we received an admission from the Austrian manager.
Never trust Toto Wolff
Management will never admit it, clearly, but it may have orchestrated everything very intelligently in order to attract even less attention. F1 often boasts about having created a highly competitive and balanced championship. The pecking order changes from race to race, and the Stuttgart-based team is riding that wave, expanding its knowledge without always worrying about the final result. After all, it has such a large margin that it can even afford the odd routine podium finish.
Wolff is lying and knows he is lying when he says that Red Bull may have caught up, or when he appears concerned about the future. The new car concept being studied by his team could represent another major step forward for 2027. The team is devoting time to it and sacrificing victories because it believes in this package. The feeling is that Mercedes has found something interesting, but we will probably only find out how much in March.
Photo: Mercedes
All the news, photos, weather, session times and times from the Singapore GP 2026
