In the first race of the season in Bahrain, the Mercedes and Williams drivers had to slow down due to overheating of the power unit, but there were no such problems with the cars of other customers – McLaren and Aston Martin. Technical director James Allison admitted that Mercedes was still trying to understand what went wrong.
James Ellison: “This is the main mystery that remains unanswered. During the race the temperature of the power source was much higher than we expected.
Choosing the level of cooling for a given race weekend is always a lottery when trying to predict what the weather will be like on race day based on your training results. But last weekend we worked in approximately the same conditions as during the winter tests, and there were no problems.
The temperature on race day was incredibly close to what we expected, which makes the mistake even more surprising. The drivers had to let off the throttle at the end of the straights and use unusual engine modes to save them. This affected our lap times, affected tire temperatures and ruined the race for us.
We haven’t found the answer yet. At the base, we tried to find the factors that changed between training and the race that caused the unexpected increase in temperature, to prevent this situation from recurring at other stages of the season.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
