Mercedes’ major W17 upgrade has delivered the additional aerodynamic load the team wanted in high-speed corners, but Friday at Sepang also revealed how difficult it may be to unlock the package fully. The car proved complicated to read on a circuit with unusual characteristics, with several mistakes from both drivers highlighting a setup balance that Mercedes has not yet completely solved.
After waiting four months, Mercedes finally introduced its second substantial technical upgrade package of the 2026 season. Expectations were naturally high, particularly because the developments appear to involve changes to certain aspects of the W17’s underlying philosophy.
Mercedes W17 upgrade changes how the car needs to be driven
George Russell had already suggested on Thursday that the upgrade would slightly change the way the W17 needs to be driven. It will therefore take time to optimise a package designed around a very clear objective: increasing aerodynamic downforce, an area in which Mercedes had increasingly fallen behind its rivals in recent races, without sacrificing the efficiency that has been one of the W17’s greatest strengths throughout the championship.
For now, Friday proved relatively difficult for Mercedes. The W17 did not appear particularly effective over longer runs in FP1, while the main limitation in FP2 was not race pace but single-lap performance.
Both Mercedes drivers suffered several lock-ups and ran wide during their qualifying simulations. As a result, neither set their best time of the day on the soft tyre, with their fastest laps instead coming on the medium compound.
The circuit configuration, a tendency for the tyres to overheat and wind intensity that progressively increased during the session caused difficulties throughout the field. However, among the leading teams, Mercedes appeared to suffer more than most, both during qualifying simulations and over the long runs.
That makes understanding how best to exploit the extra downforce generated by the new package particularly important.
Lock-ups and understeer complicate Mercedes balance
One example came during George Russell’s soft-tyre lap. The Briton ran deep at the final braking zone and ended up at the entrance to the pit lane, with the unusual negative camber created when that corner was resurfaced several years ago also tending to push drivers towards the outside.
Kimi Antonelli made mistakes in two separate places: under braking for Turn 1 and again at Turn 14. The latter error alone cost him four tenths of a second.
Despite those mistakes, Antonelli still managed to set what was temporarily the fastest middle-sector time of the session, before Isack Hadjar beat it by only a few thousandths.
That points towards two important conclusions.
The first is that Antonelli suffered too much understeer on corner entry and through the middle of the turn, meaning Mercedes still needs to improve the balance. Part of that compromise came from trying to protect the rear tyres more after the information gathered in FP1, while another factor is that the upgrade has slightly changed the W17’s characteristics, as George Russell had already suggested.
Mercedes confirms extra downforce can be felt in fast corners
The second conclusion is more encouraging: in corners where aerodynamic load is important, Mercedes appears to have taken a genuine step forward. The question is whether that improvement will ultimately be enough.
“Everything is working as expected. The drivers have confirmed that they can feel the difference in the high-speed corners,” Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord said.
“The competitive picture here, on a circuit with much more medium-speed and high-speed corner content, I think looks more like what we saw in Hungary than what we saw last week in Baku. The tyres are struggling enormously, it’s really hot. They are overheating on the surface and the internal temperature is also high. Whoever manages that challenge best will be the one who thrives this weekend.”
Tyre management could matter more than grid position at Sepang
That tyre challenge could make race management even more important than starting position.
Teams that had aerodynamic load available and were able to exploit it demonstrated that advantage during the long runs. Mercedes, by contrast, struggled to place the W17 inside its ideal operating window and found itself chasing the setup partly to protect the rear tyres from the degradation already visible in FP1.
Compared with the opening practice session, Mercedes appeared to make a clear step forward in FP2. Sepang nevertheless presents a fundamentally different technical challenge from Baku, with outright downforce carrying considerably more importance.
Sepang requires a different W17 from Baku
Mercedes has consistently possessed an extremely efficient chassis, and that efficiency has played a major role in keeping the team at the front during 2026. Over recent months, however, several rivals have made significant progress in outright downforce and have moved ahead of the W17 in that particular area.
According to the engineering assessment, Mercedes’ biggest challenge at present is finding the ideal setup operating window. The team believes there is still performance available to extract before Saturday.
Sepang’s dirty and slippery surface, severe overheating and what was described as the highest tyre degradation of the season mean the cars are operating in a different window from normal. Finding the optimum setup immediately is therefore difficult, especially as the competitive field becomes stronger and the margins between teams shrink.
“I think, as a team, we haven’t quite got the car where it needs to be yet and we need to make some setup changes because we’re a little bit off the pace. I can feel the aerodynamic load in some corners, but with this level of tyre overheating and degradation, that ends up mattering more than anything else.”
“It’s more a question of setup than the upgrade itself. The cars are operating in quite a different window compared to usual, and I think as a team we didn’t manage to put ours exactly where it needed to be today.”
Mercedes also loses usual straight-line advantage
There is another issue Mercedes must understand before qualifying. At least on Friday, the W17 did not demonstrate a particular advantage over its rivals on the straights, despite that traditionally being one of the car’s strongest characteristics.
Even the time gained along the start-finish straight amounted to only a few hundredths of a second.
There is still potential to unlock on the power-unit side, but that is not the only area Mercedes needs to investigate. The new aerodynamic package appears to have delivered the load it was designed to produce, particularly through faster corners, yet extracting that performance consistently will depend on solving the W17’s setup puzzle.
Friday therefore provided Mercedes with both encouragement and a warning. The upgrade appears to be doing its job, but with the W17 operating in an unfamiliar setup and tyre window at Sepang, there is still significant work required before the team can discover how much performance the new package can truly deliver.
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