Stella rejects Wolff claim that Mercedes can’t afford F1 car developments

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella takes issue with the claim of his Mercedes counterpart Toto Wolff that his team doesn’t have the money to put developments on the car beyond its current plan due to Formula 1’s cost cap system.

Wolff (pictured above with Stella and McLaren CEO Zak Brown) claimed his team doesn’t have the money to put developments on the car beyond the upgrade package that is due at the end of the European swing of races. With McLaren’s Lando Norris winning the past two grands prix, Mercedes’ previous advantage has disappeared as rivals have improved their cars, but Stella says he doesn’t buy Wolff’s claim, and expects to see further Mercedes updates introduced soon.

“I don't believe it,” Stella said, “because thanks to the 2027 power unit regulations, all teams will have an allowance in their reporting for the cost cap and if I'm not wrong it's like three million (dollars) that you can use in the 2026 reporting for cost cap calculations.

“And I'm sure that Mercedes, having seen that rivals are kind of elevating the game, I'm sure they will now cash in on their development that surely is happening in the background. I'm sure the car in the wind tunnel is quite a bit faster than the car they have on track and they will want to now convert some of this potential into upgrades that make it to the real car. So I'm just pretty sure that they will have upgrades.”

Stella says McLaren’s own step forward has only been shown on high-downforce tracks so far, with a very different test to come at Monza next weekend.

“The real approach we have is just one race at a time,” he said. “There's not much more you can influence than just maximizing what's next available. If we think about the demand of Zandvoort and Hungary and then about the demand of Monza, we are in a completely different regime. So I think if we can confirm our improvements in Monza, then I would say that we can look with some optimism at the remainder of the season.

“First of all we need to go to Monza and see that our car can [show] good performance in the long straights, and we know that drag is not necessarily a point of strength of our car, for instance. [And] there’s a lot of braking, which is not necessarily a point of strength of our car…

“So there's a lot of things that we need to confirm as we head on to the next race. But so far I think we can confirm that when we are at high-downforce circuits with this sort of layout, then we can fight for victories.”