Mercedes explains why F1 customers cannot extract the same power unit performance

Mercedes customers “perhaps inevitably” aren’t getting the same performance from the power unit as the works team as they lack the same “toolset”, according to Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord.

But those, and the intellectual property for them, belong to the Mercedes Formula 1 team, not Mercedes High Performance Powertrains.

Mercedes explains customer power unit performance gap

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This season, the first year of Formula 1’s new power unit regulations, Mercedes customers – led by McLaren – have expressed surprise at the difference in performance between the works team and its customers.

Unable to exploit the power unit in the same manner as the Mercedes F1 team, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella declared in Melbourne: “What they are doing shows they understand a lot more, and maybe the flow of information hasn’t been as anticipated.”

But while he conceded that it was “fair enough” that the Mercedes F1 team and Mercedes HPP had a closer collaboration, he said McLaren wanted to “intensify the collaboration with HPP”.

The engine topic rumbled on in the background before again making headlines at Silverstone when Stella questioned Mercedes’ throttle-lift technique on the straights that came as a surprise to McLaren.

“We were a bit surprised, because it’s not something we’ve discussed, and in fact, I’m not even sure it’s available to us,” said the Italian. “It probably requires some additional elements, let’s say, to use the power unit like that.”

But according to Lord, there is a straightforward explanation for why Mercedes is able to exploit the power unit more than its customers.

“Everything is in the rules and everything is in the contract,” Lord told PlanetF1.com and other select media.

“I think McLaren and the other customer teams, Alpine and Williams, are great partners to work with, they’re rightly demanding. They’ve chosen Mercedes because they choose to work with a company that provides excellent support and a great product.

“The [power unit] team at Brixworth have proven over the last however-many-years of customer supply that they do that in a very even-handed and correct way.

“Where there have perhaps inevitably been perceptions of differences, or they [customers] have, or felt potentially one step behind is in the… a lot of the simulation tools, the ability to predict behaviour of the power unit and the chassis and things like that.

“And a lot of those toolsets are things that we’ve developed not just at Brixworth but between MGP [Mercedes Grand Prix] chassis team and HPP at Brixworth. And obviously the technical regulations are very clear on what chassis team IP can and cannot be shared between teams as well.”

Instead, Lord says it’s for Mercedes’ customers to invest in developing their own toolsets.

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“So,” he continued, “in some instances there is unpicking that needs to be done before elements can be then provided to the customer teams – or the customer teams themselves are needing to do work and spend, invest their own cost cap resource into developing the tools to be able to get the most from the power unit.

“So that’s probably one of the complexities that we’ve bumped into – but kind of understandable in a brand new ruleset and a new ruleset that is more complex than the previous one.

“It’s been an absolutely massive job for everybody to get to the point of being ready at Melbourne, and we’ve seen over the last few races there’s still a steep learning curve, and we’re all still debugging and finding things that can catch us out even halfway through the season.”

Mercedes has won eight of this year’s 11 Grands Prix that have been run, with Ferrari claiming two wins before McLaren closed out the first half of the championship with a victory in Hungary.

Mercedes leads both championships, with the Brackley squad 72 points up on Ferrari in the Constructors’ standings, while Kimi Antonelli has a 50-point advantage over Lewis Hamilton in the Drivers’ Championship.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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