{"id":901643,"date":"2026-09-19T12:08:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-19T12:08:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/901643\/"},"modified":"2026-09-19T12:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-19T12:08:11","slug":"mercedes-confirms-major-f1-upgrade-for-bahrain-gp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/901643\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes confirms major F1 upgrade for Bahrain GP"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mercedes has confirmed its next major upgrade package for the W17 will come at the Formula 1 <\/a>Bahrain Grand Prix<\/a>, as it seeks to regain its dominance over rivals in 2026.<\/p>\n

Although winning the last two races, Mercedes has arguably lost its dramatic pace advantage that saw the Silver Arrows cut rivals adrift in the early part of the season. <\/p>\n

This is in part due to F1\u2019s raging development war in 2026, as teams push both power units and car upgrades to find all important lap time, with upgrades changing the competitive order race by race.<\/p>\n

Mercedes has fallen victim to this in the second half of the season, as McLaren\u2019s upgrades resulted in two consecutive wins in Hungary and Zandvoort for Norris, and in contention to win in Spain.<\/p>\n

The Silver Arrows have not introduced an substantial upgrade to the W17 since May at the Canadian GP, but this is set to change in Malaysia, according to its Trackside Engineering Director\u00a0 Andrew Shovlin, <\/p>\n

\u201cThe updates [are] going to come from Malaysia onwards,\u201d Shovlin confirmed on Nu Silver Arrows radio show. <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd hopefully we\u2019ll make a decent step. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to be out front by miles, but hopefully we\u2019ll be back into a position where we can really go into qualifying knowing that we\u2019re fighting for pole.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t got much new coming to Baku, but actually that\u2019s a circuit that\u2019s more about drag than downforce. So the car was good in Monza. Hopefully it will work well in Baku, but you need a car that can have a good straight-line speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other things, though, you need in Baku, like the street circuit nature, almost that Monaco-esque, being able to deal with the low speed, keeping all the wheels on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheMercedes expect the W17 to enjoy similar performance in Baku akin to Monza <\/p>\n

Mercedes expects strong Baku performance <\/p>\n

Given McLaren\u2019s incursion on its pace in recent races, Mercedes may have a case for being concerned in Baku, but Shovlin indicated the team is using Monza as its baseline for performance. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think if we hadn\u2019t had Monza, we would again be saying, \u2018Baku, we haven\u2019t updated for a while, that\u2019s going to be a tough circuit for us\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the fact that we showed that our car works well at these tracks that need low drag, we have an efficient car, we look good in a straight line, Red Bull are quite similar, and while that\u2019s not the only thing you need at Baku, I think, if you\u2019ve got that, you\u2019re in with a decent shout, and then we\u2019ve got to sort it out for the rather twisty, wiggly bit through the castle and those corners.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re looking forward to it, and it is a track that George has been good at before. Kimi knows it now; it\u2019s not his first year, and hopefully we\u2019ll be in a position to fight for a win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercedes is still comfortably the team to beat in 2026, but this upgrade could see a return to the early season pace that utilised to perfection. <\/p>\n

READ MORE: McLaren laud \u2018impressive\u2019 Lando Norris Madrid pole position<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mercedes has confirmed its next major upgrade package for the W17 will come at the Formula 1 Bahrain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":901644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,1881,311918,82],"class_list":["post-901643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mercedes","tag-shovlin","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=901643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/901643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/901644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=901643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=901643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=901643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}