Wolff: Poor starts “not acceptable” if Mercedes wants to win F1 world titles

Mercedes remains on the maximum score of four wins after four Formula 1 grands prix, although the competition was significantly closer in Miami than during the three race weekends prior to the April break.

McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull all travelled to Florida with significant upgrades, while Mercedes has its first major package of the year planned for the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal.

It is expected to bring Kimi Antonelli and George Russell more performance, although there is still another area for improvement: the race starts.

During the first lap of the three opening race weekends of 2026, championship leader Antonelli had already lost a total of 18 places. At the start of the sprint race in Miami, another six places were added to that total and, during the main race, two more.

Team principal Toto Wolff made it clear afterwards that the drivers could do nothing about it in Miami, but that from a team's perspective the poor starts need to be addressed quickly.

“It's not at all on him,” Wolff said when asked by Autosport. “I think today and yesterday was a team mistake. And it's just, we all know, it's just not good enough.

“We're not doing a good enough job in giving them a tool in their hands, whether it's the clutch or the grip estimates.”

Toto Wolff is not impressed with Mercedes starting record in 2026

Photo by: Hector Vivas / Formula 1 via Getty Images

Speaking to Sky Sports Germany, Wolff even described the starts so far as “not acceptable” for a team that aims to win both world titles this year. “We need to fix it – we've been watching this for far too long.”

In the opening race weekends, Mercedes still held enough of an advantage to compensate for the poor starts. However, Wolff admits that cannot continue indefinitely as the competition keeps making progress.

“And we are the only ones who, let's say, don't get that right now for a few races,” he added. “We just have to dig even deeper and to try to understand how we can fix that, because I agree with you that the gaps are not big enough to cruise into the sunset. And therefore you can't be missing starts.”

FIA safety net not designed to help teams with poor starts

Wolff knows that the solution must come from Mercedes itself, as the FIA is not planning to make further changes to the start procedure.

This is also politically sensitive, as Ferrari – through deliberate choices such as a smaller turbo – has a competitive advantage and logically does not want to give it up.

In Miami and also in Montreal, the FIA is testing a safety system with a “low power start detection” that identifies when cars show “abnormally low acceleration” after releasing the clutch. In that case, an automatic, limited MGU-K deployment will be triggered to ensure a minimum level of acceleration.

The FIA has clarified that this will not solve start issues for certain teams, but is mainly intended to prevent dangerous situations, such as when Franco Colapinto narrowly avoided Liam Lawson after his poor start in Australia.

It will not serve as a lifeline for teams like Mercedes, FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis told select media, including Autosport, last week.

“We made it clear that first of all this is not supposed to be a mechanism whereby people would be, let's say, even tempted to do it on purpose to come up better off,” Tombazis explained. “So what this would convert is a disastrous start to a bad one. It would not convert a bad one to a good one.”

Improving starts therefore remains – alongside the first major update package for Montreal – a topic that is high on Mercedes’ priority list.