{"id":110924,"date":"2025-09-01T14:16:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T14:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110924\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T14:16:01","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T14:16:01","slug":"mercedes-explains-delay-to-2026-f1-driver-contracts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/110924\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes explains delay to 2026 F1 driver contracts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes<\/a> team boss Toto Wolff has explained he needs to sort out the finer details of George Russell<\/a>\u2019s 2026 Formula 1 contract before making next year’s line-up official.<\/p>\n

Wolff has always insisted he wanted to keep both Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a> next season, though a layer of doubt lingered until Max Verstappen<\/a> became contractually unavailable in late July due to a performance clause in his current Red Bull deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Although nothing obvious is now preventing new deals for the 27-year-old and his rookie team-mate, Wolff has explained: \u201cWith George, there’s a few things where we want to optimise, some of the travelling and the marketing days. He’s an experienced driver, and for us, it’s always important to talk about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to have the best performance of the drivers, and I think we’ve given both of them quite a strain with marketing activities and media activities, and this is how we’re recalibrating.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mercedes-Benz<\/p>\n

Russell had previously stated that he wasn\u2019t going to sign a new deal during the summer break because his priority was to \u201chave a rest and recharge\u201d over that period.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the current negotiations, Wolff reiterated his belief that the Russell\/Antonelli line-up is the right one for Mercedes, and insisted there was no need for a full-blown announcement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always say there’s not going to be any big news, because we’re doing this. We’re continuing with both of them, of course,\u201d the Austrian said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs there going to be an announcement in Monza? No, but I don’t think it’s going to be even a big announcement, we\u2019re just going to give you the heads-up and say we’ve put a signature onto the agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes currently lies third in the constructors\u2019 standings, just 12 points behind Ferrari<\/a> and 34 points ahead of Red Bull, with Russell contributing 74% of the team\u2019s tally.<\/p>\n

Antonelli has been struggling of late, with just one point over the last five rounds, but both Russell and Wolff have defended the 19-year-old\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

Photos from Dutch GP – Race<\/p>\n

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Read Also:<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has explained he needs to sort out the finer details of George Russell\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110925,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[12295,64,63,60689,73690,813,3875,825,945,79396,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-110924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dutch-gp","tag-f1-dutch-grand-prix-2025","tag-formula-1","tag-george-russell","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mercedes","tag-mercedes-explains-delay-to-2026-f1-driver-contracts","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110924","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110924"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110924\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}