Toto Wolff furious at 'total bulls***' protest against Mercedes F1

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has rubbished growing concerns that his F1 squad's new sustainable fuel will not be deemed legal in time for the 2026 season.

The Silver Arrows' fuel supplier Petronas are among those in the paddock that had been reported to have not had their new fuel homologated by the FIA yet, with Shell, BP and ExxonMobil all believed to have been given the green light to fuel their F1 teams for the new campaign.

Concerns for Mercedes and their three customer teams, McLaren, Alpine and Williams have persisted during the final stint of pre-season testing before the championship gets underway in just a few weeks with a brand new set of chassis and power unit regulations.

All 11 F1 teams are required to switch to using advanced sustainable fuels in their new machinery for 2026 and beyond after the sport shifted to using 100 per cent carbon neutral fuel on their path to helping achieve F1's goal of becoming Net Zero by 2030.

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Is Mercedes' F1 fuel legal for 2026?

During the team principal press conference in Bahrain on Thursday, Wolff was asked directly about the concerns over Petronas' fuel. The 54-year-old retaliated in anger over the claims whilst also rubbishing the legality debate over the Silver Arrows' compression ratio trick after the team could be forced to change their approach to this halfway through the upcoming season.

"We were told compression ratio is something that we were illegal, which is total bulls***, utter bulls***," Wolff said.

"Now the next story comes up that our fuel is illegal. I don't know where that comes from, and it starts spinning again," he continued, referring to F1's overactive rumour mill.

However, Wolff's response then took a turn for the worse when he made the disagreeable decision to compare the constantly growing rumours around Mercedes to the continued release of the Epstein Files, which detail the criminal activities of disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Wolff said: "Maybe tomorrow we're inventing something else. I don't know. I've been on the Epstein Files God knows what I mean...[points to media representative in the room] You're not happy with me saying that, no? I was too young."

Ferrari team principal Fred Vasseur then urgently interjected and appeared to scold Wolff for the reference, although his words were not picked up on the microphone.

Wolff then seemed to immediately regret mention Epstein, responding to Vasseur by saying: "I must not say that, yeah."

The Austrian boss then turned his attention back to the question regarding Mercedes' 2026 fuel, clarifying: "[This is ] another nonsense. This is a complicated topic, and the process and all of this, but there's just not... I can't even comment."

What is homologation?

Homologation is the official certification process by which a product, in this case the new sustainable fuels used in the new 2026 F1 cars have been approved by a governing body to meet safety, environmental, and technical standards.

This process is designed to ensure any new product meets the regulations, which in the case of the 2026 F1 campaign, means a team's fuel supplier has been given the green light by the FIA that their fuel is legal under the new ruleset.

When does the 2026 F1 season start?

After pre-season testing concludes on February 20, all 11 F1 teams will then be back in action when the 2026 season starts in Melbourne for the Australian Grand Prix.

The first race of the year takes place on March 8 at 3pm local time (AEDT), 4am GMT, and 11pm ET.

READ MORE: FIA announce official F1 vote over Mercedes compression ratio controversy

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