While the technical regulations regarding the power units are going into their 4th stable year, Mercedes' engine Chief, Andy Cowell, has noted there are still gains to be made. Cowell underlined that the key to these continued improvements are Mercedes' proven testing facility.
The engines are identical and checked many times before sent out i think. So let us face it, there is a greater chance of sabotage than hamilton getting faulty PU's from the factory.
A simple line of code in the program can blow the engine on any given lap.
A small pill of contaminant.. Made to slowly dissolve over the course of time is enough to gum up the oil then burn away leaving no evidence.
Or a loose heat exchanger fitting.. Those parts are assembled in the garage just perfect for sabotage...
The chances of that happening to Hamilton or to Rosberg are twice as high.
The chances of this happening to anyone in the Mercedes pool, eight times as high. And the chances of this happening once in three seasons, three times as high on top.
--- happens.
Rivals, not enemies. (Now paraphrased from A. Newey).
As this is a technical thread and to exit the tinfoil hat area how about giving this sort of statistics on overall failures?
I will try to count the number of PU component failures in 2015 and 2016 of the Merc PU. Should not be much, please help me to count correctly:
Merc: ICE in Italy 2015, MGU-H in China 2016, MGU-H in Russia 2016, MGU-K in Azer 2016, ICE in Malaysia 2016
FI: No power in Spa 2015 (reason?)
Lotus: No power in Oz 2015 (reason?)
Manor: MGU-K in Azer 2016
Anything missed? It is hard to count the failures during FP. We can also add 2014, but it does not really change the picture: Three ERS failures for Merc, two for McLaren and one failure on a FI. No idea if the spark plug on the ICE is really a failure I would count here as it is a replaceable.
PlatinumZealot wrote:You missed free practice failures and qualifying failures. And hydraulic failures (was not made clear whether engine or part the drive-train though).
Sure. The list is far from complete. Can you add them?
PlatinumZealot wrote:The engines are identical and checked many times before sent out i think. So let us face it, there is a greater chance of sabotage than hamilton getting faulty PU's from the factory.
A simple line of code in the program can blow the engine on any given lap.
A small pill of contaminant.. Made to slowly dissolve over the course of time is enough to gum up the oil then burn away leaving no evidence.
Or a loose heat exchanger fitting.. Those parts are assembled in the garage just perfect for sabotage...
If sabotaging was that easy and clean, it wouldn't be somebody doing it to Ham's car to favour Ros. It would be somebody highly paid by Ferrari/RB whatever to do it to both cars. I am pretty sure Merc has advanced security procedures with redundancy supervisors etc... to keep the competitors to simply pay somebody to put an untraceable contaminant in the oil, or code line that I guess self erases from the ECU.
If there is not a technical cause for Hamilton's engine failure then best we stop discussing it till we get some proper evidence, or else sabotage will always be a legitimate part of the discussion.
Mercedes haven't found the cause yet. Funny, with all those sensors on board nothing suspicious yet..
βWeβve talked amongst ourselves and said βhow is this possible?β,β said Wolff. βBut there is no rational explanation or pattern in these failures. If there were, we would resolve it.β
godlameroso wrote:People have short memories, how many KERS failures did Nico have during 2014 Abu-Dhabi rings a bell.
None. The whole ERS system failed, once.
When looking at reliability it's really pointless to compare the number of issues like for like. You have to look at the consequences of the problems for the championship. He (and the fans) had nothing to complain about. Lewis had him covered comfortably.