SPIELBERG, Austria — It’s not quite time for Mercedes to sound the alarm bells in the 2026 Formula 1 season.Ferrari and Lewis Hamilton may have had the upper hand of late, with the seven-time world champion winning the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix last time out, but it wasn’t because the Silver Arrows had just lost its edge. Hamilton was on a different tire strategy and benefitted from a virtual safety car period.That’s not exactly a crisis; Mercedes simply got beat. But it did foreshadow what could come later on, as this season becomes a car development race.Ferrari appears to have taken a step forward with its car package, and it’s bringing its first engine upgrade of the year to this weekend’s race in Austria. The power deficit Ferrari faces to Mercedes will still exist at other tracks on the calendar, and both teams will continue to bring aerodynamic upgrades, each making steps forward at different times when those new parts arrive.Mercedes did make mistakes during the Barcelona race, such as the pit stop set-up error that compromised the end of George Russell’s race (though he still finished second). And questions were raised with how the Barcelona race unfolded for the team, ones that could dictate Mercedes’ future in how it handles an intra-team battle.On top of this, there’s the reliability problem that stopped Kimi Antonelli just after he’d passed long-time Barcelona race leader Russell, which extends to its customer teams.As Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff put it, Barcelona was “a reality check.”The podium celebrations after the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya GP. (Rudy Carezzevoli/Getty Images)Russell had entered the Barcelona weekend focusing just on what he could control.He was coming off of another unlucky race weekend in Monaco, where Mercedes didn’t serve his time penalty correctly (one he received for alleged pit lane speeding) and the stewards hit him with a drive-through penalty. That came on the heels of Montreal, where Russell had to retire from the race lead due to an engine failure.“When I’ve sat down and thought about this season as a whole, if it was just a clean season, not a season that I had good luck, but just a neutral season, I think I’d have had three more podiums to my name,” Russell said on Thursday in Barcelona, about his current 50-point deficit to Antonelli in the standings, with Hamilton currently ahead in third place.“And it would have been five out of six races on the podium, maybe a couple of wins, two out of three sprint race victories. I still think I’d probably be slightly behind Kimi in the standings, but the picture is totally different.”To say Antonelli has thrived this season is an understatement. The 19-year-old won five consecutive grands prix out of six to start the year, maintaining a strong lead in the championship standings and hardly putting a foot wrong.He looked untouchable. Until Barcelona and Mercedes engine reliability problems struck – on the Italian’s car this time.Before that, the Mercedes teammates had raced each other hard once again, after their lengthy battles in both races in Canada.This came after Mercedes had “incorrectly adjusted the front wing” on Russell’s car during his final pit stop “due to an issue with the adjuster gun,” according to deputy team principal Bradley Lord. This slowed the Briton due to his car suddenly oversteering more, where the rear end of the car turns faster than the front and feels less predictable to a driver.Kimi Antonelli (left) and George Russell battle during the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya GP. (Clive Mason/Getty Images)Any teammate fight is a fine line for a team, given they must balance risk versus reward on letting their drivers race. But there can be a cost element to letting them fairly duke it out — as Lord pointed out, Mercedes lost time when Russell and Antonelli battled on-track that aided Hamilton’s run to victory.“I think it’s clear the win for the team is the priority,” Russell said on Thursday in Austria, when asked about his opinion on team orders, which Mercedes could consider deploying if it finds itself fighting Ferrari for race wins regularly from now on.. “It doesn’t matter which driver.”Russell pointed to Montreal, where he and Antonelli fought but continued pulling away from the rest of the pack, the victory not under threat. Barcelona, though, was the first real moment this season where another driver entered what had previously been a two-person fight.Russell did acknowledge that the safety car helped Hamilton, but he added, “without the safety car, Kimi and I were losing time together and it would have given the opportunity to Ferrari to win. And that is when we need to be smart as teammates and it’s very clear the team wants to win the race.“It doesn’t matter if it’s myself or Kimi.”The key for Mercedes will be managing the drivers and their emotions. Antonelli acknowledged that given how high these can run during races, it’s not going to be easy to control this in the moment.But he underlined why it’s important for the Mercedes duo to “race even more wisely” now Ferrari is much more of a threat. It’s not just him and Russell in the championship battle now, with Hamilton 41 points off Antonelli’s standings lead.“I think this weekend (in Austria) is going to be a weekend where all the top four teams will be super close,” Antonelli explained. “Because Ferrari is bringing a new engine, a more powerful engine, Red Bull is bringing a big (aero) upgrade, which should give them a lot of performance, and also McLaren, they’ve been there ever since Miami.“Definitely the way I’m gonna go racing might be a little bit different. (But it) also depends a lot on the scenario. If there are competitors that are very close, then probably I will race in a different way than if it was just me and George racing.”Kimi Antonelli suffered his first retirement of the season in the Barcelona-Catalunya GP. (Peter Fox/Getty Images)The other factor that Mercedes needs to consider is that reliability issue that’s plaguing itself and its customer teams. Antonelli said after the Barcelona event that he didn’t see his race-ending problem coming.The 19-year-old’s Barcelona DNF marked the second battery-related failure Mercedes has endured, both of which occurred when battling other cars (to go alongside Russell’s in Canada)..Russell said that his battery from his Canadian GP retirement is still being sea-freighted back to Mercedes’ F1 base in the United Kingdom. But these are issues the team has seen back at the factory, he added, and customer teams McLaren and Williams have endured issues as well.If Mercedes doesn’t get on top of the brewing reliability problems, it could become a decisive component to the two championships.It has impacted title fights before, such as the 2016 showdown between then-Mercedes teammates Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. Hamilton endured costly engine failure in that year’s Malaysian race that led to a decisive points swing in favour of Rosberg, who had a near-flawless campaign from a mechanical standpoint.In 2026, Ferrari is pumping out upgrades and gaining ground, and Red Bull and McLaren aren’t far off either. As Wolff pointed out in his Austrian GP preview on Mercedes’ website, reliability is Mercedes’ Achilles heel right now.Russell, however, moved to play this down.“I generally feel these things even themselves out over the course of a season. The seasons are long enough now to give you that chance. To try and overcome.”