Racing
© LGEPR
Mercedes has won the first five Grands Prix of the 2026 Formula 1 season and opened a 72-point lead in the constructors’ championship, turning the disrupted opening phase into a clear early shift in the competitive order.
The Brackley team sits on 219 points after five race weekends, with Ferrari second on 147. That leaves Mercedes 108 points better off than it was at the same stage of 2025, when it had 111, and marks the third time in team history that it has begun a season with five straight wins.
That start carries real weight in F1 terms. Before this year, there had been seven occasions where a team won the opening five races of a season, and every one of those campaigns ended with both the drivers’ and constructors’ titles.
The picture has been shaped by unusual circumstances. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia were canceled because of unrest in the Middle East, and the first five weekends of 2026 also included two extra sprint races compared with the same point in 2025, creating more scoring opportunities. Even with that caveat, Mercedes has established itself as the early benchmark not only on Sundays but over one lap as well.
Across the first five qualifying sessions, Mercedes has been the 100 percent reference for pure pace. McLaren has been its closest challenger on average, 0.386 seconds back, with Ferrari 0.421 seconds off and Red Bull 0.580 seconds down. The result is a weekend pattern in which Mercedes has controlled both the front of the grid and the front of the race.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, cautioned that the standings overstate the gap. “The gap is not as big as the championship standings might suggest,” he told Sport Bild. Wolff said Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren had all shown they could be competitive, but added that Mercedes “got off the best at the start” and was able to lap consistently while rivals lost time to problems in the garage.
The advantage is already reshaping both title fights. Kimi Antonelli leads the drivers’ standings on 131 points after contributing four of Mercedes’ five wins, while Charles Leclerc is the top non-Mercedes driver in third and 56 points back.
The teams most affected are the ones that set the pace a year ago. McLaren is the biggest loser in the constructors’ comparison, dropping from 188 points after five races in 2025 to 106 this season, a fall of 82 points. Red Bull is also down, from 89 to 57, while Mercedes has moved from chasing to dictating the early championship.