Austrian motorsport executive Toto Wolff has admitted that the power unit reliability issues which Mercedes is currently facing have stemmed from their attempt to match Scuderia Ferrari’s superior pace from two years ago. In 2019 Mercedes eventually overhauled the Maranello team to win both world championships that season, despite the fact that for most part of the season Ferrari had a more powerful engine.
In the final part of the championship there was some background investigation over the Italian manufacturer’s PU although the team and FIA eventually came to a non-disclosed agreement, with a new PU for 2020 leaving Ferrari languishing behind.
Currently Mercedes has taken many grid penalties due to the fact that its power unit had “high degradation” during the F1 season, as explained by the Mercedes Team Principal, with Toto Wolff pointing out that the push for finding even more performance in 2019 is now the catalyst for the current issues.
“I think we were pushed very hard in 2019 and came with a power unit in 2020 that was right there But really, it stretched us too much and if you are in the constant pursuit of performance, sometimes reliability falls behind. I guess this is what happened.” – he explained.
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Honda shovelled all of its resources into providing Red Bull with its 2022 PU a year early with the Japanese manufacturer withdrawing from Formula 1 at the end of the season.
“We are fighting an extremely potent and reliable Honda engine and these guys have put all the resource you can potentially deploy on this last season, fair enough, and will continue to be the power unit in the next few years, in some way frozen. Therefore, we need to make sure that next year we start with an engine that is as good in performance as it is now but one that can actually go through the season without enduring engine penalties.” – the Mercedes Team Principal concluded.
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