Mercedes driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli said the team cannot yet tell whether its long-awaited W17 upgrade has made the car faster or slower, after the package’s first race weekend at Sepang International Circuit in Malaysia. He said the track’s unusually abrasive surface made it difficult to assess the changes, and suggested the upgrade may have left Mercedes less competitive.

Mercedes had planned to introduce the new parts at this weekend’s Singapore race. The team brought them forward after Formula 1 added last weekend’s Malaysian round to replace the cancelled event in Bahrain. Sepang’s old, abrasive tarmac complicated the team’s work to understand how the upgraded car performed.

Antonelli qualified half a second behind Max Verstappen. He said the upgrade’s effect remained unresolved: “the question we need to answer because we don’t really know if it made us go faster or worse.”

He also pointed to Mercedes’ difficulties at other circuits with older track surfaces. “It’s fair to say that this season, whenever we went on really old Tarmac, we’ve struggled. For example, in Zandvoort, McLaren was much quicker than us, especially on the older Tarmac.”

Antonelli said the conditions could be hard on the tyres and may help explain the team’s struggles. “So I think maybe it’s just a fact that the Tarmac is very old and that for the tyres it’s very, very hard, and maybe we just struggle on this kind of Tarmac.” He added: “But, of course, the track and the Tarmac made our life difficult in understanding whether it made us improve or not.”

The championship leader said Mercedes expects to learn more from the data gathered in Malaysia before heading to Singapore. “I’m sure the team - they have a lot of data, especially after this weekend - and I’m sure for Singapore we will come with a much, much better view on the package and hopefully we can extract the full potential out of it.”

The upgrade was introduced as Mercedes adjusted its schedule after the Bahrain event was cancelled and replaced by the Malaysian round. The team’s original plan had been to debut the parts in Singapore. Antonelli’s comments leave open whether the package itself affected the car’s competitiveness, since the Sepang surface also made it harder to establish its performance.

The RaceFans report also noted a separate observation from Lewis Hamilton: he suspects he could have fought for the win had he not started on slick tyres. It listed other coverage of the 2026 Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, including interactive lap charts, times and tyre data, as well as reports on Hamilton’s call for Formula 1 to learn lessons from formation-lap problems at Sepang, the FIA’s description of the circumstances behind formation-lap car stoppages as “unprecedented,” and Lando Norris saying “I guess it’s my fault” after stewards reprimanded him for a near-miss under the Safety Car.

The report was written by Keith Collantine, who founded RaceFans in 2005, when the site was called F1 Fanatic. Collantine previously worked as a motoring journalist and began running the site full-time in 2010, pursuing his ambition to focus on motor racing.

Based on reporting by RaceFans.