Formula 1: “It’s bullshit”… Accused of cheating on his engine, the Mercedes director is ironic about the Epstein affair

An astonishing release. Accused of irregularities in the engine and fuel of its single-seaters for the 2026 season, Toto Wolff, the general director of the Mercedes Formula 1 team, got angry against this “bullshit” this Thursday, even ironic about the Epstein affair.

“They might invent something else tomorrow, I don’t know: I’ve been in the Epstein files, God knows what! Another crazy thing! », Launched, to the laughter of journalists, the engineer who took Mercedes to the top in F1 with eight World Champion titles for constructors and seven for the drivers.

“We were told that the compression ratio (of the engine) was something illegal, it’s bullshit, complete rubbish,” first thundered the Austrian boss of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team, during a press conference on the sidelines of the F1 pre-season tests in Bahrain.

Mercedes suspected of having found a flaw

For weeks, Mercedes has been suspected by some of its competitors of having found a loophole in the new engine regulations for measuring the compression ratio and therefore the power of the car.

The Mercedes-AMG unit, which is like the other 50% thermal and 50% electric engines this season, also equips the McLaren, Alpine and Williams single-seaters. Furthermore, according to the specialist press, the fuel supplied to Mercedes by the Malaysian oil company Petronas has not yet been approved before the first Grand Prix of the season, on March 8, in Melbourne (Australia).

“Then we hear a story according to which our fuel is illegal, I don’t know where it comes from but it’s starting to spin,” continued Wolff, very annoyed in front of the press gathered for more than a week around the Sakhir circuit for driving sessions and accumulation of data from the 11 teams in the paddock.

Wolff then launched his sentence evoking the sprawling Jeffrey Epstein affair, named after this American financier and child molester who died in prison in 2019, whose network and its repercussions are affecting some of the elites in the United States and Europe.