Gazzetta dello sport reports rumors about power units for the upcoming F1 season. Rumors about power units for the upcoming F1 season.

Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello sport has reported some rumors about the power units for the upcoming Formula 1 championship, which starts on March 5 with the Bahrain Grand Prix, as the power units are frozen, but reliability can still be improved.

“For Ferrari 30hp increase, Mercedes at 16hp, Red Bull at 10hp.”

Ferrari: The 066/7 PU (Ferrari) had shown serious reliability problems last year, especially at the turbocharger & MGU-H level, problems that were apparently induced by a not always effective functioning of the TJI (Turbulent Jet Ignition) system. Last year Ferrari were forced to reduce the power due to these reliability issues. It seems that solving this problem would give Ferrari a power increase of almost 30hp. That would be quite a big step forward.

Mercedes: Mercedes’s work would focus on reducing internal mechanical friction, with non-invasive machining on the crankshaft bearings, crankshaft & connecting rods. A new lubricant formulation by Petronas would improve combustion efficiency. The gain is around 16hp.

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Honda: Without being able to change the design, the MGU-H and MGU-K were revised, with modifications that only aimed at reliability but in fact proved extremely positive in terms of reducing energy dispersion. Equally interesting was the modification of the endothermic engine’s auxiliary pumps, where the qualitative improvement of some internal components (reliability), would have allowed a saving of dispersion from the PU. We are talking about a 10hp increase.

Gazzetta dello sport also writes that Alpine is suspicious of all these improvements being all linked to reliability. Alpine engineers claim to have requested and made changes to parts of their power unit without having achieved any performance gains.