SINGAPORE — Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has branded critics accusing the team of bias against George Russell as "brainless" after the British driver's championship hopes were all but extinguished by an engine failure while running third at last Sunday's race in Malaysia. Russell heads into this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix at Marina Bay 86 points behind team-mate Kimi Antonelli and will start from the back of the grid after incurring a penalty for using too many engine parts.
Wolff described accusations of favouritism towards Antonelli as "completely nonsensical" and said the idea the team would deliberately disadvantage either driver while fighting for the Constructors' Championship was absurd. "Do they think I have a button that says, 'George engine failure now', or disadvantaging one driver against the other when we are fighting for a Constructors' Championship, when we have always had the mindset of providing everybody equal material?" he said. "There's a lot of polarisation going on, and sometimes I read what people write. I find it hilarious. These people really contribute to my own entertainment when they are abusing the team or myself. I'm Satan, I've heard."
The Austrian, who has led Mercedes since 2013, emphasised his long-standing policy of equality and his close personal ties to both drivers, who are long-time proteges of the team. "We have had Kimi since he was 11," Wolff said. "He is an integral part of the team. It is very nice to see him grow, be in a position now that he is fighting for a championship at such a young age, the talent he has." On Russell, who has been with Mercedes since he was 17, he added: "Someone that I feel a lot of, how can I say, emotions for and compassion. We are very close." Wolff said he and wife Susie socialise regularly with Russell and his fiancee Carmen Montero Mundt: "If people would see that we're travelling together, we're having coffee in the same coffee shop, we're going to the gym. That's why it's pretty annoying to have some lunatics that have no understanding really about how relationships work coming up with these kinds of accusations."
Wolff pointed to this weekend's split specification at Marina Bay as a "good example" of equal treatment after an upgrade introduced in Malaysia last weekend failed to provide the expected step forward in performance. Russell will run the previous specification while Antonelli continues with the new package. "We don't know which one is going to be quicker," Wolff said. He noted the new car "seems to be a little more tricky to drive - not saying it's necessarily slower, because there will be goodness in it, but maybe we haven't just found a way of putting it all together and tuning it," while the older car is "a bit more stable, grippy, but that is really just one data point. That is one free practice session, and it will be needing more time to really come to more conclusive information."
The upgrade is Mercedes' first significant change to the car's design since June and Wolff said its evaluation could have significant ramifications for the team's preparations for 2027. "We've put a few months of upgrades into the car, clearly pointing in a direction that we think is advantageous," he said, "and maybe we just need to calibrate it a little bit in order to find the right way forward for 2027."