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Mercedes is on the back foot in Formula 1’s fast-moving development battle this year, and boss Toto Wolff has made a curious admission that it cannot spend much more. Mercedes hit the ground running under new regulations in 2026 while its nearest rivals Ferrari and McLaren were left playing catch-up. Mercedes romped to the opening six race wins of the year, but the last six grands prix have been split equally between the team, Ferrari, and McLaren. Mercedes introduced a major upgrade in Canada, but has since held off in bringing new components, while Ferrari and McLaren—and Red Bull—have brought upgraded pieces at a quicker rate. McLaren deliberately entered 2026 with a relatively basic car before developing heavily, altering its aerodynamic direction, and has prospered in recent grands prix in Hungary and the Netherlands—albeit at two venues which the team expected to suit the strengths of its car. Wolff took a playful yet deliberate dig at Ferrari earlier in the year, querying the rate of its development in a cost cap era, and after the race in the Netherlands spoke again about his team’s situation, this time versus McLaren. “We haven’t got the money to put developments on the car,” Wolff said. “We are trying to evenly split that through the season based on calculations of when we can bring the biggest updates and optimizing the championship points, but we just can’t do what we can’t do, it is a development race, if you bring an upgrade, each of the top teams will have a couple of tenths in it, and that’s what we lose.” Wolff added that “you will see how towards the end of the year whether they are going to be able to deploy as much stuff on the car as they do now,” but offered no definitive answer for why Mercedes is not on equal footing with its rivals. “Did we spend too much at the beginning of the initial development? I don’t think so. We had a really quick car, we left 50-100 points on the table through reliability issues that would have given us a little bit more of a gap than we have today. And other than that we just continue to execute what the plan was and what the financial realities are for us.” U.K.-based Phillip Horton started covering Grands Prix while still at university and swiftly deemed that writing about Formula 1 and the behind-the-scenes machinations was much more engaging than reading centuries-old novels. Degree gained, he went on to cover the sport full-time from 2014 and is as intrigued and excited by the destinations Formula 1 visits during its lengthy annual world tour as the racing itself. Phillip joined Autoweek in 2021 and while he has just about learned to spell in American English he has yet to find anywhere in America that makes a proper cup of tea.