Qualifying in Malaysia dealt a harsh blow to Mercedes, as FormulaUno.it reports, with Kimi Antonelli locking down fourth place and George Russell managing only eighth. Championship leader Antonelli will nevertheless move up to third on the grid due to a penalty for Hadjar, with his teammate climbing to seventh alongside him. The Brackley squad appeared to have solved the persistent gremlins that plagued their Friday running during the morning session, yet those very same issues roared back to life when the clock started ticking in qualifying, robbing them of the expected step forward. Naturally, the team's brand-new upgrade package is sitting right at the center of the post-mortem.
That fresh hardware is producing a strange cocktail of problems on track. "It seems that we are very slow because the car generates a lot of drag," Wolff admitted, noting that the team is losing significant chunks of time on the straights, particularly when matched against Max. Compounding the pain is an intractable front-end issue in slow corners, specifically at turn two, where the car simply refuses to rotate due to excessive understeer. Wolff pointed out that these specific traits never showed their faces before, leaving the crew poring over telemetry to figure out what is going wrong.
It's not good, because in Q2 you already know that you will make it through the round,
The gap to the front was a bitter pill to swallow. Instead of losing the expected three tenths, the deficit stretched out to three, four, or even five tenths. It marks a rare occasion where the team has missed out on the top three with such a massive margin. Despite the disappointment, Wolff maintained belief that the new parts fundamentally work, even if the current circuit's brutal heat and unique asphalt are masking their benefits.
Looking ahead to Sunday, the team is stepping into entirely uncharted territory. High degradation rates observed during practice sessions mean both race pace and strategy remain enormous question marks, pointing toward a potentially chaotic multi-stop grand prix that could throw open unexpected windows of opportunity. At the same time, Friday's shaky long-run pace leaves them hoping overnight setup tweaks paid off.
Wolff also didn't hesitate to point the finger at Antonelli for a costly track limits violation during his first run in Q2. That error forced the young Italian to burn through an extra set of tires, leaving him compromised with only a single set of soft compounds available for the shootout in Q3. "It's not good, because in Q2 you already know that you will make it through the round," Wolff stated, highlighting how dearly a single mistake costs in such a tightly contested grid.
