‘A really intense period’ – Mercedes explain why start of the European season will 'test' the team

Mercedes Technical Director James Allison has conceded that the start of the European leg of the season – which will feature a run of several races back-to-back – will “test” the team, given the pace of the development race in 2026.

The Silver Arrows have enjoyed a commanding run during the opening stages of the campaign, putting them in the lead of both championships after taking victory at every Grand Prix so far.

However, with the upcoming Monaco weekend set to kick off a busy period in June and July, Allison has warned that the squad’s advantage could easily slip away if they do not maintain their work throughout this phase.

“The European season kicks off in Monaco, and after that [there is] a really intense period of six races in just eight weeks,” Allison explained during a Canada debrief video shared by Mercedes.

“And that’s going to test everybody here, not just those that travel to the tracks but also everyone back here in the factory, keeping up with the intensity of that racing period. Six races, eight weeks, and it’s important to know that this is an unusual season from a development race point of view.

“These are new rules – the development rate is really steep, something like a quarter of a second a month.

“So if there was a power cut here in Brackley and the same up the road in Brixworth for six weeks, that would be all of the advantage that we’ve eked out so far this season gone in a flash, so [it’s] really important for us [that] we’re able to just keep performance coming to the car in this next batch of six races.”

As well as preparing for this sequence, Allison admitted that the team will also be focused on addressing the root cause of the power unit issue that put George Russell out of the Canadian Grand Prix, which Allison described as “an engine kill that was caused by a failure in the battery”.

“We can see enough at the end of the race that the battery was fairly unhappy, some heat damage there, and we’ll have to figure out in the coming days and weeks exactly what caused that and put it right,” he explained.

Reflecting back on the overall weekend in Montreal – in which Kimi Antonelli claimed his fourth consecutive race win – Allison also said: “It was a big weekend for us – key because it was the weekend where we introduced our first major upgrade for the year, and we were looking for it to be strong.

“It was, but a weekend that was otherwise extremely good from a performance point of view was marred by the disappointment we all feel for letting George down with the reliability of the car.”