Mercedes brought what it thought was a 0.3-second upgrade to Malaysia and instead may have gone half a second backward. The W17 revamp showed the expected downforce gains in the data but delivered none of it to the stopwatch — and Toto Wolff watched Max Verstappen take Red Bull's first win of the season while his team scratched its head.
The new package boosted high-speed grip but killed low-speed performance and straightline speed. Whether that's the upgrade or Malaysia's brutal heat and decade-old asphalt is the question dominating the factory debrief this week. Kimi Antonelli pointed to similar struggles on old tarmac at Zandvoort; deputy TP Bradley Lord noted the drag penalty is expected but the slow-corner deficit isn't.
Singapore looms with one practice session and a decision to make: run the cars in different specs Friday to gather real-world data, or commit to the new parts and hope Sepang was an outlier. Rolling back the upgrade isn't off the table.
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