Racing
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After Charles Leclerc’s British Grand Prix win, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said Ferrari now looks like a genuine threat for the rest of the 2026 season, even as Ferrari boss Fred Vasseur refused to call it a title fight.
Wolff’s concern was rooted in the way Ferrari has changed its trajectory since Barcelona. Mercedes had won the first six races under Formula 1’s new regulations, but Ferrari’s major update package in Spain brought it much closer to the front. Silverstone reinforced that view. With George Russell finishing second for Mercedes, Wolff said Ferrari had arrived as more than a one-weekend challenger.
“We must look after ourselves,” Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, said after the Silverstone race. Before the weekend, he said, Ferrari had suggested it would be “missing energy” at Silverstone, but “that was not the case.” Instead, Wolff said, “They were a strong competitor and exactly that is now to be expected for the rest of the season.”
Vasseur struck a very different tone. Despite Ferrari winning two of the last three races, he said the team is still too inconsistent to talk seriously about a championship push, especially with Ferrari still 78 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ standings.
Austria was his main example. Ferrari showed speed in qualifying there, but converted it into only eighth place for Leclerc and fifth for Lewis Hamilton in the race. For Vasseur, that swing is exactly why he does not want Silverstone treated as proof that Ferrari has fully arrived.
“The fight for the championship are your words,” Fred Vasseur, Ferrari team principal, told reporters after Silverstone. “After Barcelona, it was said that Ferrari is back in the title race. I said ‘no’. A week later you said Ferrari is nowhere. I said ‘no’ again. And we were on the front row.”
His message inside Ferrari is to treat Silverstone as a good weekend, not a turning point. Vasseur said the focus at the factory would be simple: “Guys, we had a good weekend. Now focus on Spa.” He added that “we are improving step by step,” but insisted that does not mean Ferrari has suddenly become favorite.
Vasseur also argued Mercedes remains the benchmark on outright pace. He said Mercedes still has “a small advantage on pure performance” and estimated that across the “six, seven sessions” at Silverstone, Mercedes was “probably five times ahead.” That leaves Spa as the next measure of whether Ferrari’s progress is becoming sustainable rather than occasional.