Mercedes' Akkodis-sponsored debrief of the Japanese Grand Prix has produced something rare in the modern paddock — a public admission, from the team, of where they are losing time. Deputy technical director Simone Resta has gone on the record with what Jolyon Palmer and the post-race pundit class had already deduced from the outside: the W17's race starts are not just inconsistent, they are the single weakest part of an otherwise championship-leading car.
"So many of you submitted questions about our race start performance for this race, and we know it's probably one of, if not the weakest performance characteristic" of the package, Resta said in the debrief.
The candour matters. Mercedes have begun the 2026 era with three wins from three. Kimi Antonelli, at 19, leads the drivers' championship. The team has the strongest power unit, the lightest chassis, and the customer engine McLaren and Aston Martin have spent the spring chasing. The starts are the one place where the data does not match the trophy cabinet.
Resta also gave the most precise answer the team has offered yet on what cost Antonelli his pole-converted lead at Suzuka. The team's young Italian was overhauled at lights-out by Oscar Piastri, lost time again at the safety-car restart, and then ran into a deployment ceiling fighting through traffic.
"He found himself at some point battling with the Ferraris and hitting the harvesting limit, and having an unexpected super clip that really lost him another track position," Resta said.
The phrase "unexpected super clip" is a quietly damning one. Super clipping — the moment when the battery runs out of harvest mid-overtake and the car drops anywhere from 30 to 60 km/h off its expected pace — is the single technical phenomenon driving driver fury at the 2026 regulations. Mercedes' admission that their own car experienced an unplanned super clip in the middle of a race fight is the first real-time confirmation that the championship leaders are not above the problem.
Resta did not, however, soften the broader picture. The team has, in his own words, had "a very great start of season."
"It has been a very great start of season, and we won all the three initial races and the sprint as well. If you sum all the points available, we got the maximum out of it," he said.
What he was less willing to do is sound complacent. The technical leadership of Mercedes has spent the past three years rebuilding the team after the porpoising and bouncing era, and Resta's framing was that the team's biggest competitive risk now comes from inside.
"That unfortunately doesn't mean much more than that, because we know our competitors are going to push harder during April," he said.
He also addressed Antonelli's place in the storyline directly, framing his teenage rookie's Japanese Grand Prix win as the most striking individual storyline of the season.
"It was another great performance from Kimi. It's impressing that we have seen that just in the race after China, that was his first proposition and winning Formula 1," Resta said.
The pattern Resta is acknowledging matches Palmer's outside diagnosis almost exactly. Palmer's F1 TV breakdown of the Suzuka start identified Mercedes as the only Mercedes-power-unit team failing to launch cleanly: "Mercedes have a big issue with their starts and everyone else is fairly uniform. You've got Mercedes power units in the back of these two McLarens who are both…" The McLarens were both punching forward off the line. The two factory Mercedes were not.
For now, Resta's public admission carries only one consequence — pressure on the engineering group to fix the start map before Miami. The five-week European factory shutdown that follows the early flyaway races gives the team's race-engineering side what is essentially a clean window. Antonelli has already conceded his own technique needs work. Resta has now added the team's own software side to the to-do list.
Mercedes' weak point is no longer a guess. It has been put on the record by their own technical leadership. What changes by Miami will tell us how seriously they are taking it.
Source: youtube.com