I think you've totally missed the original point, the restriction on engine modes during a race harms the racing, it's just 1 less variable we have to help mix things up, it's no different to when they tried to do the race on a single set of tyres. They can't change the engine mode during the race, period. It doesn't matter if they made the right or wrong decision before qualifying, we are not able to see a race unfold where drivers can use different engine modes for different parts of the race, and that harms the race in my view. There are plenty of examples of historic races where engine modes were involved in the end result, just go back through the various battles between the Mercedes and Red Bull teammates throughout the recent years, a lot of that was because 1 driver was using a higher engine mode to attack his teammate.nzjrs wrote: ↑13 Dec 2020, 21:52If your point is that they will have to be slightly more conservative now then they were before, they sure I agree, it's a question of degree. The best teams will leave the least on the table.
If Mercedes didn't have enough PU life left at the end of season then that's true even if they could change modes freely. It's bad luck for them and I'm sure they won't make the same mistakes next year.
The teams with the most reliability left can run in a higher mode for more time, now as they could before. That was evidently not Mercedes power this race, which is a rare departure from normal service.
You're also treating engine reliability as a constant, it's absolutely not, ask Perez about it, his brand new Mercedes going pop halfway through the race is evidence of that. There's no exact measure of "how much reliability is left", it's a measure of risk vs reward, which IMO is best made during the race.
Fortunately, real-life motor racing is quite different from computer games, they don't have an allocated allowance of engine reliability that depletes in a linear fashion based on which engine mode they are using, it's much more nuanced than that.
