Wolff warns Norris and Hamilton are genuine title threats after Dutch Grand Prix
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff said on 24 August 2026 that McLaren’s Lando Norris and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton are genuine contenders for the Formula One world championship after Norris won the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. Wolff made the comment as Mercedes’ early-season dominance appeared to have been all but erased.
Mercedes had won eight of the opening 12 meetings, including the first six, but McLaren arrived at Zandvoort with several upgrades and Norris took a decisive victory. Norris beat the Mercedes cars of title leader Kimi Antonelli and George Russell into second and third, while Hamilton finished fourth, and Wolff noted that Ferrari had moved closer to the front.
Antonelli leads Hamilton and Russell by 59 points in the championship and leads Norris by 83, with 11 races remaining, and Wolff warned his team to remain vigilant. “It’s not only Norris, it’s also Ferrari, even if you have a gap of 50 points to lose, that’s something you need to be worried about. This is going to be tough. It could become tighter, we need to do the optimal job every single weekend, every single session, every single weekend,” Wolff said, adding that Mercedes were “absolutely conscious of the threat.”
Norris’s victory at Zandvoort was his second in a row this season; Ferrari have taken two wins as well, one each for Hamilton and his teammate Charles Leclerc. Both McLaren and Ferrari have deployed extensive upgrade programmes while Mercedes have introduced only one major development so far, at the Canadian Grand Prix.
Wolff set out Mercedes’ development and budgeting approach directly: “We haven’t got the money to put developments on account,” he said. “We are trying to evenly split that through the season based on our calculations of when we can bring the biggest updates and optimising the championship points. We just can do what we can do. That’s why it is a development race. So the ride has been a bit tougher than at the beginning of the year.”
Mercedes are not expected to bring another major upgrade until the grand prix in Malaysia, branded as the Bahrain GP, in October, with three races still to come before then. Ferrari are understood to be bringing an extensive engine upgrade to the next round at Monza in two weekends’ time, and Wolff confirmed that Antonelli will take a new engine at his home race in Italy and with it the attendant grid penalties.
Both Antonelli and Russell said after Zandvoort that they thought the McLaren was now the quickest car, but Norris insisted Mercedes still have the stronger package. “We certainly have a car now capable of beating them,” Norris said. “We didn’t win [in the sprint race] but I worked a lot on my driving. I want to believe more than everyone else and we turned things around on Sunday. So we certainly have a very similar car all in all to Mercedes but I think they have a better all-round performing car than we do.”
The next confirmed race is the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in two weekends’ time, where Ferrari plan to introduce their engine upgrade and Kimi Antonelli will take a new engine and the associated grid penalties.