The Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS garage has been a massive lightning rod for controversy throughout the 2026 season. With 19-year-old rookie sensation Kimi Antonelli absolutely dominating the timesheets and veteran George Russell looking increasingly isolated—especially after the team abruptly withdrew their appeal of his Monaco penalty—fans have loudly accused Brackley of blatant internal favoritism.

But Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has officially had enough of the narrative. In a surprisingly candid response during Episode 4: The Fight is On (via Mercedes-AMG Petronas YouTube), Allison aggressively shut down the fan-fueled conspiracy theories, revealing that the team’s internal culture operates on a completely different, heavily financial wavelength.

An “Alien” Accusation

F1 fans are inherently tribal, and when a driver like Russell appears to be getting the short end of the stick, the fanbase immediately assumes the pit wall is intentionally sabotaging him to elevate their new golden boy. Allison, however, stated that this concept is fundamentally absurd to anyone actually building the cars.

Addressing the accusations directly, Allison explained that fans are heavily projecting their own bias: “Because people are very invested in the people that they support, and they want their driver to prosper above all others”.

He challenged critics to actually step inside the Brackley factory, stating that if they were “lucky enough to come and work in a team, you would instantly be imbued with the culture of that team” and would realize how “utterly alien that thought is to anyone in the team”.

For the engineers, the fan outrage is completely incomprehensible. As Allison put it, “when we hear it, it’s like we’re hearing another language, it’s an argument that you can never win because both sides of it are just completely divorced from one another”.

Multi-Million Dollar Bonus Reality

The most fascinating part of Allison’s defense isn’t just his dismissal of the fans; it is his blunt admission of what actually motivates the Mercedes crew. While the media and fans are entirely fixated on whether Antonelli or World Champion Lewis Hamilton will secure the Drivers’ title, the Mercedes engineers genuinely do not care.

“Because our main championship, weirdly, is not the Drivers’ championship, it’s the constructors’ championship,” Allison revealed. He laid out the cold corporate reality that ultimately governs the garage: “If we’re lucky enough to win a bonus, we win it on the basis of the Constructors position, not the drivers, we don’t get anything for that”.

This completely shatters the favoritism argument. Why would a team intentionally sabotage one of their own cars when their personal paychecks rely on both cars crossing the finish line? “So everything we care about is Constructors oriented, and favouritism makes zero sense to us in that respect,” Allison noted, emphasizing that the team simply wants “maximum points from both the drivers at all times”.

The Only Time Mercedes Will Intervene

While Allison insists the team is “ambivalent about which one is better than the other,” he did outline the single, brutal scenario where Mercedes will actively deploy team orders to favor one driver.

According to the Technical Director, the pit wall only intervenes if “one driver is mathematically incapable now of winning a championship and the other driver is in a fight with a third-party driver”.

Up until that exact mathematical breaking point, Mercedes just wants their cars running at the front, completely indifferent to the order.

For George Russell, the message is incredibly clear. Mercedes is not actively working against him, but they also aren’t going to hold Antonelli back. If Russell wants the team’s full, undisputed backing to fight off external rivals like Hamilton, he doesn’t need political favor—he just needs to beat the 19-year-old in the other car.

Mercedes has identified an issue with its battery that is at the heart of its recent Formula 1 race retirements which have cost both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli, and is working on a permanent fix.

After Russell’s Mercedes conked out while he was leading the Canadian Grand Prix last month, Antonelli suffered the same fate while running in second place in the Barcelona GP last weekend. Both were linked to a failure with Mercedes' battery.

While not specifically linked to the works team’s problem, customer squad McLaren has also suffered a run of electrical trouble; Lando Norris needed a battery change during the Monaco GP weekend and retired from the race with power unit settings being noted as the cause of his DNF, while both Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to start the Chinese GP with separate electrical issues.

Speaking immediately after the Barcelona GP, Wolff said Mercedes can’t afford the run of retirements in the battle for the F1 world titles and the team would “leave no stone unturned to understand” what was causing the unreliability.

Read Also: Kimi Antonelli's Barcelona GP retirement prompts reliability concerns at Mercedes

After diagnosing Antonelli's car after the Barcelona race, Mercedes technical director James Allison said the team has pinpointed the issue to its power unit’s battery and a permanent fix is being worked on.

“I think anyone who's a keen watcher of the sport will have seen that this has laid a few Mercedes engine cars low over the season so far,” Allison said on Mercedes’ Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show. “They're not all identical, but they do sort of originate in the same broad part of the battery.

George Russell, Mercedes

“I think that most of the areas of risk have been understood. And with a bit of luck, when we start to sort of phase in the new modules into the racing season – then our fortunes as a fleet should pick up.

“Obviously for us, that's an important thing. These DNFs are very, very painful.”

Speaking more broadly about how the team designs and builds parts with reliability in mind, Allison explained how the team aims to identify failures either in testing or in engine rigs to avoid being exposed in races – but inevitably, when pushed to extremes and in different racing conditions, previously unidentified weaknesses can appear.

“You accept that there will be failure. We try to make sure that failure happens in testing or on rigs and that it happens as little as possible when you're out there trying to earn championship points,” Allison said.

“Now, clearly it doesn't always work because occasionally the car will DNF and that is definitely a failure of our process and all of our attempts to deliver performance without the downside of that performance.

“But when a failure like that does happen, then in the first instance and perhaps before it's fully understood, then the team will tend to take a slight half-step backwards to be more cautious with the equipment, to push it slightly less hard, just to give a little bit of resilience to the kit that's obviously suffering.

James Allison, Mercedes

“But a different part of the team will try to figure out what was the root cause of that failure to design that out, prove that out and put something back on the table that is sufficiently robust.

“So you do a first intervention that is just to try to sort of give the vulnerable thing an easier life while then working on a proper cure that lets you really cane it.”

Mercedes hasn’t given a timeline on when the “proper cure” will be ready as it begins preparations for four race weekends across five weeks, starting with the Austrian GP next weekend.

But given its two DNFs in Canada and Barcelona have effectively cost 43 points - ignoring changes of positions for the sister car after the retirements - Mercedes' dominant position in the F1 world constructors' championship has been eroded to 72 points by Ferrari.

Read Also: Why Mercedes won't challenge George Russell's Monaco penalties after all

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Nearly a month after the 2026 Nürburgring 24 Hours concluded, the final standings have been changed, and Max Verstappen‘s squad has moved up one more spot as a result.

Team Abt, which crossed the line second overall, has been retrospectively disqualified following a technical infringement, with stewards formalising the decision on June 12.

An inspection of the #84 Lamborghini following the race found its power output running beyond the tolerance margins set by the Balance of Performance regulations.

Six SP9-class GT3 cars were put through routine dynamometer testing in the days after the race; the Abt car was the only one to fail, with entries from Aston Martin, BMW, Ford, Mercedes-AMG, and Porsche all cleared.

Reports suggest the #84 was producing around 20 horsepower above the permitted reference value, with the allowable tolerance sitting at two percent, equivalent to roughly 10 hp from an estimated 500 hp baseline.

That’s a meaningful gap and not just a small error.

How the Revised Podium and Classification Look

Behind overall winner Mercedes-AMG Team RAVENOL – Maro Engel, Luca Stolz, Fabian Schiller, and Maxime Martin – the Walkenhorst Motorsport Aston Martin Vantage AMR GT3 EVO of Christian Krognes, Mattia Drudi, and Nicki Thiim has been elevated to second place.

Rowe Racing‘s BMW M4 GT3, shared by Daniel Harper, Max Hesse, Sheldon van der Linde, and Dries Vanthoor, now occupies third.

Further down the order, the Verstappen Racing #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 has been bumped to 36th overall.

Verstappen’s part in the event drew a record crowd of 352,000 to the Eifel region, so the result – however modest on paper – will have been watched closely. The car had run with Jules Gounon, Lucas Auer, and Daniel Juncadella alongside the four-time F1 champion, and looked firmly on course for victory with under four hours remaining, leading what appeared to be a comfortable 1-2 for the Winward Mercedes operation.

A driveshaft failure on Juncadella’s watch ended that, handing the lead to the sister #80 car with Maro Engel at the wheel.

Juncadella was generous in his assessment of Verstappen’s performance in the race, telling PlanetF1.com: “The more I see him drive, the more I see how incredible he is.”

With Abt electing not to appeal the stewards’ ruling, the 54th edition of the Nürburgring 24 Hours now has its definitive classification.

Verstappen has already said he wants to return next year, and there is reportedly a reasonable chance the 2027 event – pencilled in for May 27–30 – won’t conflict with an F1 round. Finishing 36th instead of 37th isn’t exactly the result he came for, but given the driveshaft robbed him of an outright win, he’ll probably take it.

Former Formula 1 driver and Sky Sports analyst Martin Brundle has branded the handling of the Monaco Grand Prix pitlane penalties and Pierre Gasly's reinstated podium "a mess with no easy solution".

Writing in his regular post-race column following the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, which saw Lewis Hamilton secure his maiden grand prix victory for Ferrari, Brundle commented on the Monaco penalty situation.

Several drivers were handed penalties during the Monaco Grand Prix for speeding in the pitlane. While the majority of those drivers served the penalties during the race, Gasly, who finished third on the road, had the time added after the chequered flag and lost the podium as a result.

Alpine lodged a right of review, which was ultimately successful after the French team was able to provide evidence clearing Gasly that was not available to the stewards at the time. Gasly's podium was subsequently reinstated ahead of the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix. 

McLaren and Red Bull, whose drivers either served their penalties during the race or were affected by the reinstated podium, have now begun the appeals process. Mercedes had, but has since withdrawn.

Martin Brundle

"That's a very complicated and uncomfortable decision," Brundle wrote of Gasly's reinstated podium. "Other drivers in Monaco had served their penalties and adjusted strategies accordingly, and Russell's race was destroyed, but because they were not post-race penalties nothing was changed for them retrospectively in the results.

"This will now be appealed by Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull who all lost out. Ferrari are not too bothered as it cost Mercedes and McLaren points. This also sets a precedent of not serving marginal in-race penalties to preserve the right to contest them post-race.

"It's all a mess with no easy solution. It turns out one of the timing loops in the Monaco pit lane was 77cm shorter than calibrated hence lots of 60.1kph recordings when the limit was 60kph."

He concluded: "Lessons will be learned no doubt and the story will presumably run a while."

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Mercedes had a poor weekend at the Barcelona Grand Prix overall, given their status as the season’s strong favorites.

The Barcelona track was formerly the testing ground for the preseason due to its having characteristics of many different kinds of tracks.

With Barcelona coming a decent chunk into the season, it is now a track where teams bring big upgrades and look to fully realize their benchmark.

Despite Mercedes taking pole position, they ended up falling well short of a victory, losing to Ferrari by 19.5 seconds, and Kimi Antonelli suffered a reliability issue that cost him.

The car has certainly been bolstered by its class-leading power unit, which has given it a significant advantage in natural lap time.

However, Barcelona has exposed the car’s lack of speed in aerodynamic performance.

“The W17 is clearly a good car, not just a mediocre one elevated by a mega power unit. There was already more than a hint of its impressive downforce in Monaco, where Kimi Antonelli blitzed the opposition on a track that obviously isn’t power sensitive,” F1 reporter Scott Mitchell-Malm wrote for The Race.

“Putting three-tenths of a second on customer McLaren at a proper aero track like Barcelona showed the car’s one-lap potency. 

“Mercedes’ bid to win faded when early race leader George Russell started struggling in the second and third stints, though. Its faster driver Kimi Antonelli was happier with the pace of the car, so this was a silver lining – but he retired late on with yet another Mercedes technical problem. 

“Russell called it ‘a big concern,’ and the lack of pace he had on the hard compound gives Mercedes homework to do on the car side, too.”

With Ferrari making notable gains in car development, McLaren likely continuing to push, and Red Bull increasing their desperation, Mercedes cannot afford to sit on their hands.

\This past weekend’s developments highlight the need for a serious upgrade package.

Bu gün Formula 1 üzrə dünya çempionatında 2026-cı il mövsümünün növbəti mərhələsinin (7-ci qran-pri) həlledici yarışı baş tutub.

Arena.az xəbər verir ki, budəfəki yarış Barselonada təşkil olunub.

Bundan əvvəlki Yaponiya, Çin, Mayami, Kanada və Monako qran-prilərində qalib olmuş “Mersedes”in gənc pilotu Kimi Antonellinin qələbə seriyası qırılıb. O, bu yarışda sona 4 dövrə qalmış texniki səbəblərindən yarışı dayandırıb.

Barselona-Kataloniya qran-prisi Lyuis Hamiltonun qələbəsi ilə yekunlaşıb. Bununla da britaniyalı sürücü “Ferrari”nin heyətində ilk qələbəsini qazanıb. Hamilton sonuncu dəfə 2 il əvvəl Belçikada birinci olmuşdu.

Barselonada ikinci yeri “Mersedes”in digər sürücüsü Corc Rassel tutub. 3-cü yerdə isə daha bir britaniyalı Lando Norris qərarlaşıb.

Qeyd edək ki, 1968-ci ildən sonra ilk dəfə fəxri kürsüdə 3 britaniyalı pilot olub.

Bu mərhələdən sonra Hamiton Antonelli ilə fərqi 41 xala endirib.

Beləliklə, geridə qalmış 7 mərhələdən sonra Kimi Antonelli 156 xalla vahid liderdir. İkinci yerdə “Ferrari”nin sürücüsü Luis Hamilton (115) qərarlaşıbsa, ilk üçlüyü Kimi Antonellinin komanda yoldaşı Corc Rassel (106) qapayır.

Mühəndislər Kubokunda “Mersedes” 262 xalla ilk sırada qərarlaşıb. “Ferrari” 190 xalla ikinci, “Maklaren” isə 141 xalla üçüncü yerdə gedir.

Formula 1 üzrə dünya çempionatında 2026-cı il mövsümünün növbəti – 7-ci qran-prisi Barselonada keçiriləcək. Bu yarış iyunun 14-də təşkil olunacaq.

Formula 1 üzrə dünya çempionatı, 2026

Pilotların yarışında turnir cədvəli:

1. Kimi Antonelli (Mersedes) – 156
2. Luis Hamilton (Ferrari) – 115
3. Corc Rassell (Mersedes) – 106
4. Şarl Lekler (Ferrari) – 75
5. Lando Norris (Maklaren) – 73
6. Oskar Piastri (Maklaren) – 63
7. Maks Ferstappen (Red Bull) – 55
8. Pyer Qasli (Alpin) – 41
9. İsak Hacar (Red Bull) – 34
10. Liam Louson (Rasinq Bulls) – 28
11. Oliver Berman (Haas) – 18
12. Franko Kolapinto (Alpin) – 16
13. Arvid Linblad (Rasinq Bulls) – 13
14. Karlos Sayns (Uilyams) – 6
15. Aleksander Albon (Uilyams) – 5
16. Esteban Okon (Haas) – 3
17. Qabriel Bortoleto (Audi) – 2
18. Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) – 1
19. Niko Hulkenberq (Audi) – 0
20. Serxio Peres (Kadillak) – 0
21. Valtteri Bottas (Kadillak) – 0
22. Lens Stroll (Aston Martin) – 0

Mühəndislər Kubokunda xal sıralaması:

1. Mersedes – 262
2. Ferrari – 190
3. Maklaren – 141
4. Red Bull – 89
5. Alpin – 57
6. Rasinq Bulls – 41
7. Haas – 21
8. Uilyams – 11
9. Audi – 2
10. Aston Martin – 1
11. Kadillak – 0