© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says Mercedes’ result at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was not determined by engine settings.
Ahead of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Toto Wolff admitted Mercedes had to ‘turn down’ their engines due to a suspected MGU-K issue that plagued Williams and Racing Point.
Max Verstappen suggested this might have played a part in Mercedes not being able to catch him, but Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton said they were unaware of any engine changes. Now Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin confirms the peformance loss due to ‘turned down’ engine wasn’t significant enough to influence the race result.
“[It was] not an amount that’s going to determine the race result,” said Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director.
“You’re talking significantly less than a tenth of a second, so not the difference between first and second.”
Shovlin adds that Mercedes opted to ‘turn down’ their engines as a precautionary measure and not to mitigate a specific problem.
“I would say that rather than being acutely aware of a specific problem, we are operating the power unit in a way that is as conservative as we can be in order to try and avoid a problem.
“But when you don’t understand exactly the string of issues, all you can do is just be a bit cautious.
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“During the race we were trying to reduce the duty marginally, but you’re right, the drivers wouldn’t have necessarily been aware of it.
“It was just something we were trying to manage in the background.”
In the end Shovlin admits that even if Mercedes opted for an strategy opposite to that chosen by Red Bull during the Virtual Safety Car period, the result would probably be the same.
“You can do something different, but to be honest, the result would probably be relatively inevitable.
“Once you have all cars on the same age tyres, it neutralises the racing a bit and there wasn’t a lot of opportunity therein.
“If it hadn’t been for [the safety car], we would have probably used one car to pull Max in, let the other one go long, try to create a tyre delta.
“Whether it would have resulted in any position gain, looking at their pace, they were very comfortable, so I doubt it.”
