Toto Wolff: Mercedes poor starts “not acceptable” if we want to win F1 world titles

Toto Wolff is not impressed with Mercedes starting record in 2026

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.

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

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