Ferrari’s performance at the British GP made Toto Wolff believe that the Italian team will be a strong rival to Mercedes in the remainder of the 2026 Formula 1 season. After the race at the Silverstone Circuit, the head of the German team highlighted that he expects a balanced duel for the rest of the calendar.
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“They were a strong competitor, and that is something already expected for the rest of the season,” said the Austrian. Before the stage, Scuderia itself believed that the SF-26 would struggle on a high-power and low-energy recovery circuit, characteristics that, in theory, favored Mercedes. However, the aerodynamic efficiency of the Italian car compensated for the disadvantage in energy management.
For Wolff, now it is up to Mercedes to react, especially because the next challenge will be the Belgian GP at Spa-Francorchamps, another circuit with similar characteristics: “We need to look at ourselves,” Wolff told the press. “They [Ferrari] said before the weekend that they would have a lack of energy on this circuit; but they did not.”
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At Silverstone, Charles Leclerc won comfortably after Kimi Antonelli’s mechanical problem, while Lewis Hamilton had already shown Ferrari’s strength by securing the sprint race pole position.
With nine rounds contested, Ferrari is 78 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ championship. The Maranello team also reduced the performance gap thanks to a series of updates, an evolution that had already led Wolff to question, after the Austrian GP, the rival’s development pace.
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