“There is a performance drop in every engine”: Mercedes boss thinks that their ‘new engine’ boost won’t be lasting very long

Toto Wolff feels that the power boost Lewis Hamilton got from his new engine component at Interlagos won’t be lasting very long.

Hamilton changed his Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) ahead of the Sao Paolo GP last week.  As a result, he had to take a 5 place grid penalty for the race.

Since he was disqualified from the qualifying session on Friday due to DRS irregularities, he had to start the Sprint race from 20th. That would not be a problem as he powered his way up the field to finish 5th, overtaking 15 cars in just 24 laps.

Subsequently, he had to start 10th in the main race due to his engine penalty. Once again, the Mercedes driver was able to use the pace in his W12 to breeze past opponents and win the race in Brazil.

The Mercedes car showed tremendous pace last weekend. This came after the ICE change in Lewis’ power unit. Fans and pundits seem to think that this newfound pace in the car will be a massive advantage for them over Red Bull, going into the last 3 races of the season.

Team principal Toto Wolff on the other hand thinks that this  “new found pace” won’t last very long.

Also read: Former F1 driver thinks it is going to be very tough for Max Verstappen to win the Championship this year

We’ll certainly lose a lot of performance in the engine, says the Mercedes chief

The Austrian confirmed that Silver Arrows won’t be using any more engines in 2021. Therefore, he expects them to lose a little bit of performance. There were questions of engine reliability in the Mercedes garage but Toto feels they have been addressed.

“There is a performance drop-off with any engine.” said Wolff. “It means that, even though we’ll be racing with the engine until the end of the season, we’ll certainly lose performance.”

“We are going to the end of the season now with this engine. We still have questions over reliability. But we hope we have had the right answers, and we’re going to the end.” he concluded.

Also read: F1 MD Ross Brawn hails Hamilton for his monstrous Brazilian GP win

Why did Mercedes choose to change their ICE in Brazil?

People were expecting Lewis to take a grid penalty long before the lights went out in Sao Paolo. Durability issues were looming over the Brackley based team for quite a few weeks. Still, the team decided to wait till Brazil to change their component and take that penalty.

Mercedes trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin reveals why.

“There wasn’t a technical reason to change, as in we didn’t think we were at risk of failing and we don’t think we were at risk of failing, although these power units are running awfully hard and you can never take reliability for granted,” said Shovlin.

“There is an attraction to take a penalty at a sprint race because if you can win on a Saturday that is more points you can score and you can lessen a deficit. It was also a track that we hoped we could overtake at and recover positions, and we proved that in the last two days.” he said.

The battle for both the Formula 1 World Championship continues this weekend as the sport makes its debut in Qatar.