There could be a reliability trade off here--with the engines needing to last several more races. Cooling issues may be a way of saying posterity and long-term strategy. In future races Merc may be choose to switch on their higher engine modes for a return to normal pace. However, the Honda unit may indeed now have improved efficiency, lowered cooling requirements. Time will tell.nzjrs wrote: ↑30 Jun 2019, 21:18Interesting comments in the press conference - Bottas said they couldn't run high engine modes (for cooling reasons), and had to lift and coast often. Compared with Max and Honda who ran mode 11 for 30 laps. It's a good sign concerning the cooling and the entire package.
That's probably a factor, but I thought it was notable that Bottas explicitly described cooling as the reason for turning it down now. I suppose he could have meant "the long term affects on reliability due to operating in high modes at this temperature", but to me it sounded more acute than that.roon wrote: ↑30 Jun 2019, 21:51There could be a reliability trade off here--with the engines needing to last several more races. Cooling issues may be a way of saying posterity and long-term strategy. In future races Merc may be choose to switch on their higher engine modes for a return to normal pace. However, the Honda unit may indeed now have improved efficiency, lowered cooling requirements. Time will tell.nzjrs wrote: ↑30 Jun 2019, 21:18Interesting comments in the press conference - Bottas said they couldn't run high engine modes (for cooling reasons), and had to lift and coast often. Compared with Max and Honda who ran mode 11 for 30 laps. It's a good sign concerning the cooling and the entire package.