Mercedes is operating within the "financial realities" of the F1 cost cap, according to Toto Wolff, who claimed the team has "no money" for fresh upgrades.
Mercedes has not brought a sizeable upgrade package since the Canadian GP at the end of May, with rivals Ferrari and McLaren all bringing regular packages to eat away at the sizeable pace advantage enjoyed by the W17 at the start of the season.
Kimi Antonelli and George Russell have won eight of the 12 races thus far, but only two of the last six stretching to Barcelona, and McLaren has suddenly emerged as the nearest rivals following Lando Norris's successive wins in Hungary and the Netherlands.
Norris himself does not believe McLaren has a championship-winning car as the MCL40 still struggles in slow-speed corners, although Antonelli, who leads the drivers' standings by 59 points over Russell and Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton, believes the W17 is no longer the fastest grid on the grid.
Mercedes leads the constructors' championship on 425 points, 87 clear of Ferrari on 338, with McLaren in third on 263.
When asked why the team had not brought any upgrades over the European season, Wolff claimed that the team "haven't got the money to put developments on the car," as teams operate within the cost cap limit, with spending capped at $215 million for the season for all 11 teams.
Further questioned about why the team does not have the same financial muscle as its rivals, Wolff explained that the team was simply sticking to its plan amid the constraints.
"There are many reasons why you can look at that," Wolff began when asked by media, including RacingNews365, why the team was so offset in terms of its upgrades plan and why it had no money to bring new parts.
"Did we spend too much in the initial development? No, I don't think so. I just think we are an organisation have a different and certain size and infrastructure.
"In that respect, we had a really quick car.
"We've left between 50 and 100 points on the table with reliability issues that would have given us a little bit more of a gap than we have today.
"Other than that, we're just continuing to execute what the plan was and what the financial realities are."
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