Mercedes have admitted to ‘fighting a few little issues’ with their 2020 engine, as they strive to unlock more power for the new season.
Having been the leaders of the pack in terms of power unit throughout most of the years of the hybrid era since 2014, Mercedes appeared to have been usurped from this position in 2019. Ferrari seemed to be clear leaders in terms of outright power and energy deployment efficiency throughout 2019, leading to victories at Spa-Francorchamps and Monza – the most power hungry circuits on the calendar.
Mercedes’ 2019 effort was understood to have been compromised due to cooling issues, leading the team to run their units slightly below their outright capabilities.
As a result, Mercedes have been working hard on addressing this issue for 2020 as they issued an update on social media on Tuesday.
Andy Cowell, who leads Mercedes’ engine department in Brixworth, says there has been some minor setbacks in development over the winter break.
There’s lots going on in Brixworth, and lots of improvements across the whole power unit. That’s on the ERS side and on the internal combustion side.” Cowell said. “As ever we are fighting a few little issues as we pull everything together, so there’s lots of work going into building the right spec, giving it a long run and then providing power units to the team so they can fire up the cars.”
However, Cowell says he doesn’t see any problems with supply as Mercedes get their own power units ready as well as the stock required for engine customers Racing Point and Williams.
“It’s about getting the hardware ready to go track testing and with the car launch on February 14, and then off to Barcelona with three cars hopefully pounding around the track for the six days of testing before we are off to Australia.”
“For the race pool, we have a huge amount of parts already made and the assembly is going well. So, a busy time chasing bits of performance, getting the reliability there and getting a huge amount of hardware together and getting it to the other side of the world.”
Mercedes will launch their new W11 on February 14th, before testing begins with Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on February 19th.
