Mercedes' competitive advantage revealed
Mercedes Team which has enjoyed a dominant form since the introduction of the V6 hybrid engine in 2014 has endured fatal technical failure with Lewis Hamilton’s car in the Malysian GP a week ago which prompted the team to apply safety measures in a bid to protect against another failure.
Lewis Hamilton was controlling last weekend’s Malaysian GP after his team-mate Nico Rosberg clashed with Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel right after the start. The Briton was safely cruising for the victory when his engine gave up its life and blew up with just 15 laps to go.
Mercedes sent the faulty powertrain back to its engine centre Brixworth. It arrived on Monday which enabled the team to start a throughout analysis on it.
The engineering team headed by Andy Cowell has been working flat-out since then and it managed to find the root of the issue. The team announced on Thursday that "Lewis' engine suffered a big-end bearing failure. This happened without warning after 618 km and was preceded by a loss of oil pressure in Turn 15,” stated Mercedes.
The team decided to put safety measures in place to avoid any further complications.
"Within a week you are unable to properly assess all the root causes of the problem," said team chief Toto Wolff to autosport.com.
"We have tried to contain it with several measures, which I can't really comment on, but it doesn't give us an ultimate guarantee and relief that we are safe for tomorrow. It's not an easy situation.”
The Anglo-German squad reverted to another oil specification and less aggressive engine settings to protect its engines.
"We have put certain safety measures in place to maybe not run it as spicy as we could. But we don't know, as a fact, that this can protect the engine more.
Wolff also revealed that his team is hopeful that the new setting won’t have a huge influence on the race pace as they are affecting the qualifying modes more significantly.
Despite to all the “reinforcement” and more conservative engine modes, Mercedes locked out the front row for tomorrow’s Japanese GP. However, the team hasn’t enjoyed such an utter dominance it usually has.
The closest driver Kimi Räikkönen only got beaten by 302 thousands of a second while Mercedes’ advantage was 661 thousands of a second against Ferrari last year on the same venue and the reigning champion team seemed to be unbeatable in the recent qualifying sessions.
It clearly indicates that the technical measures for this weekend have an impact on the pure performance of the Mercedes car which seemed to be perfectly balanced as usual.
The fact that so small detail changes in the engine setting can have such an influence on the pure competitive performance of the car clearly shows that the key of Mercedes’ seemingly never-ending dominance is its engine. That advantage may not be explained by pure power output difference between Mercedes and its rivals, but by difference in torque parameters and Mercedes’ aggressive engine modes which is usually only turned on in the all-important last part of qualifying sessions and in the intense parts of races.
Those suggestions are against Mercedes’ constant attempt to deny any dominance with its powertrains. The team wanted to minimise the number and effect of technical changes which the FIA put in place to enhance engine convergence from 2017 onwards.
