McLaren team boss Andrea Stella reveals discontent at lack of information being provided by engine supplier Mercedes
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McLaren were well off the pace as Mercedes secured a one-two at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix; the Silver Arrows appear to have a crucial advantage over their engine customers; Formula 1 heads to China for a Sprint weekend, live on Sky Sports F1 from this Friday

James Vowles and Andrea Stella have voiced how unexpected it is to see Mercedes extracting so much efficiency during deployment from the HPP engine.

McLaren, Williams and Alpine only received the latest version of the engine last Thursday, while Mercedes already ran it for all six days of testing in Bahrain. The F1 rules state that engines need to be delivered identically after homolugation; and HPP only went through homolugation after the Bahrain test.

Stella said: "We have work to do to exploit the potential of the power unit, which, once I see the potential that HPP is extracting, looks like there’s more that is available.Now, it’s not obvious how you do that. For us, we are in a journey of knowledge.

"The works team and HPP will have worked together for a long time. So, they will have collaborated, talked about how to use the power unit. That’s fair enough, but we’ll definitely intensify the collaboration with HPP because our understanding is that there is some low hanging fruit that we should be able to cash in.

  • Microw@piefed.zipOPEnglish
    5·
    24 hours ago

    IMO one could certainly speculate that HPP might have delayed the homologation process enough so Mercedes would have an advantage. And that Mercedes might have a better knowledge about the engine simply because of personnel links. Unfortunately that’s not exactly against the rules.

    • Rheinish@lemmy.world
      4·
      23 hours ago

      It’s the works team privilege rearing its ugly head again even though it was supposed to be eliminated by the rule change. Leave it to F1 teams to find the tiniest loopholes and turn them into season-defining advantages. I do think it goes against the spirit of the law, however little that matters.

      Hopefully, the customer teams can sort this out quickly and make it a non-issue, so the next few races will be closer than the one in Australia.