Mercedes forced to turn down engines in Mexico

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Mercedes forced to turn down engines in Mexico

Mercedes forced to turn down engines in Mexico

Finishing down in seventh and ninth places in practice for the Mexican GP, Mercedes have revealed they turned down the performance of the engines due to overheating concerns.

While Red Bull dominated Friday’s running at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez circuit, Mercedes struggled for pace in both sessions.

Lewis Hamilton finished the day seventh fastest, 1.38s slower than Max Verstappen, while Valtteri Botts was a further 0.04s off the pace.

Technical director James Allison revealed part of the reason for that was Mercedes had to turn down their engine performance in the heat.

However, with cooler conditions forecast for the rest of the weekend, he reckons they will be able to turn it up ahead of Saturday’s qualifying.

“This is an unusual track, which places unusual demands on the chassis, power unit, cooling systems and tyres,” Allison said.

“From all our running today, we have to conclude that we have not yet found the best way to meet those unusual demands with good performance on both single laps and in the long runs

“We were overheating the power unit in a number of areas today, and that meant we had to protect against this by turning it down as a precaution.

“With a bit luck, and no little hard work, we can get ourselves into better shape tomorrow and on Sunday, when conditions are also forecast to be cooler.

“We have plenty of work ahead of us overnight and in FP3 tomorrow to put ourselves in a stronger position than we were able to achieve today.”

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