Power unit: Ferrari-powered cars to receive plenty of fresh elements
Several Ferrari-powered cars will complete tomorrow’s Austrian Grand Prix with a host of fresh power unit components while reigning world champion Max Verstappen has also started using his second and last control electronics on home turf for his team. F1Technical's senior writer Balázs Szabó reports on the engine situation from the Red Bull Ring paddock.
The current generation of F1 power units features seven different elements: the internal combustion engine (ICE), motor generator unit-heat (MGU-H), motor generator unit-kinetic (MGU-K), turbocharger, energy store (ES), control electronics (CE) and exhaust.
Over the course of the 2023 season, a driver may use no more than four ICEs, MGU-Hs, MGU-Ks and turbochargers, two energy stores and control electronics, and eight of each of the four elements that make up a set of exhaust systems.
All four drivers racing for the customer Ferrari teams, Alfa Romeo and Haas received fresh internal combustion engines for the Austrian Grand Prix. Interestingly, it will be only the third new engine for Valtteri Bottas, Zhou Guanyu, Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg despite Ferrari’s reliability issues in the earlier part of the 2023 F1 season.
The two Haas cars will be equipped with a new turbocharger as well with the two factory Ferrari drivers also receiving a fresh TC. It will be the third unit for all four drivers, meaning that they still have one new component to use in the remainder of the season.
The same quartet will use a fresh motor generator unit – heat in Austria with one new unit remaining for the rest of the current championship campaign.
Interestingly, all Ferrari-powered cars will be equipped with a fresh exhaust system at the Red Bull Ring with all of them having used three EXs up until this point of the season.
Double world champion Max Verstappen will add a new energy store and a new control electronics to his pool of engine components. This means that the Red Bull driver will try to see out the season with his previous and the newly-installed unit.
AlphaTauri’s Nyck de Vries and Yuki Tsunoda will be allocated with a fresh energy store with the Japanese drivers also having received a fresh control electronics just like Alfa Romeo’s Bottas.
That was the power unit situation ahead of the Austrian Grand Prix:
As for the gearbox units, Oscar Piastri is the only driver to have started the Austrian Grand Prix weekend with a fresh gearbox cassette and gearbox driveline & auxiliary components. With drivers having an allocation of four gearbox cassettes and internals for the entire season, the Australian still has one more fresh unit for the remainder of the season.
