Wolff: We don't have enough money to implement new products.

      Last weekend, McLaren driver and reigning world champion Lando Norris secured his second consecutive victory, while the Mercedes drivers took the remaining two spots on the podium. Toto Wolff acknowledged that the limited budget is holding his team back, preventing them from upgrading at a faster pace.

      According to FIA statistics, throughout the previous period of the season, the Ferrari team introduced 40 technical innovations, Red Bull Racing and McLaren each introduced 38, while Mercedes only introduced 24.

      "We don't have enough money to implement updates," said the head of the Mercedes team. "We try to evenly distribute resources throughout the season and based on our calculations, we decide when it is most appropriate to present the most extensive complexes of technical innovations.

      We are just doing what we can. But that’s why it’s called a race of upgrades, because top teams gain at least a couple of tenths with each update, while we lose. So right now, things are a bit more complicated than at the beginning of the year.

      Closer to the end of the season, we will see if technical innovations on the cars of our competitors will appear in the same quantity as they do now. Some may adopt a different strategy and spend more significant amounts at the beginning and middle of the season than at the end.

      Can we say that we spent too much at the initial stage of upgrading the technology? I don’t think so, but I just believe that our organization has a certain size and infrastructure. We do have a really fast car. But due to reliability issues, we lost between 50 to 100 points – if it weren't for that, our advantage could have been somewhat greater.

      In other respects, we continue to follow our plans considering the financial reality we are in."

      In 2026, team budgets are capped at $215 million, but in the next two seasons, this limit will increase by another $3 million.

      However, Andrea Stella, the head of the McLaren team, is skeptical about Wolff's comments: "I would like to believe this, but I actually don’t… I’m sure Mercedes sees that competitors are improving and will increase spending on upgrades. There is no doubt about that, and it is already happening.

      I have no doubt that they will continue to implement technical innovations, and one should assume that they will likely be quite good, but right now I don’t want to think about it at all."