Toto Wolff has confirmed Mercedes won’t give up on their hopes in 2025 to get a head start on the new F1 rules in 2026.

Mercedes have endured🥂 an up-and-down campaign this y🦋ear.

Ahead of the summer break, they were the in-form team, winning thre🐓e of the four races ahead of th𓆏e shutdown.

However♎, since Zandv𒅌oort, Mercedes haven’t competed at the front, falling back behind Ferrari in the pecking order.

2025 will be the final year of these current regulations, with entirely new rules introduced 12 months𒐪 lat🔥er.

In a bid to start 2026 strꦰongly, some teams might opt to abandon focusing on the year before.

Wolff has categorically ruled this out for Mercedes, with the Austrian eyeing♉ title𒆙 success in both seasons.

“This is the crux of the matter every year, and especially if you have such a big regulatory change, are you going to compromise one year or the other🐎?” Wolff♓ told Autosport.

“But I'd like to take it from Niki's motto, when 🅷being asked. ‘Would you rather win this one or the next one?’ And he says, ‘Both.’

“Sometimes it is much less complex than one thinks. Probably the transition ofꦚ people and capa💙bility into the 2026 regulations is going to happen a bit earlier than it would under stable regulations, but it's not going to be game-changing.

“Nobody's going to switch the machines off in January, unless you are𓆉 really nowhere. But there is no꧋thing to gain, because between P10 and P7 doesn't make a difference for us anyway. We are fighting for victories and podiums, and cannot write it off.” 

Me♌rcedes’ inconsistencies aren’t strange at the front of the♓ field though with Ferrari and Red Bull also facing similar troubles.

Wolff conceded it was difficult to understand the lack of consistency in performance betwee𒊎n teams besides McLaren.

“This variance in performance from race to race, or over a few races, is very difficult to compute, because what looks like an unchanged car can g꧋o from race winning to P6,ဣ” he added.

“The only team that is not a victim of that is McLaren, who I think have such a solid baseline and a less narrow window than all of us, thඣat they'ꦯre able to keep the performance stable.

“All of the others bounce between exuberance and depression. Before the summer, everyone wrote off Ferrari. But they have 🔴come back very strong♐.

“B🐈efore the summer, it was Mercedes who was the leading team, and clඣearly not today anymore. So it is so intricate to identify those performance contributors that at times even that most clever people are lost.”