Mercedes, along with their customer teams, have backed out of running their new, upgraded power unit for this weekend’s race in Montreal.
Mercedes were due to roll out a new spec, upgraded power unit for this weekend, which would have seen their works team and customers Williams & Force India all run the new engines; this would have been keeping with their originally planned schedule from earlier this year.
But “quality issues” with the new power units mean that this planned upgrade has been put off to the next round, set for Paul Ricard in south France.
This means that the now heavily-used previous engines will continue to be used for an extra race.
According to the BBC, Mercedes say this decision won’t affect their performance or cause any additional worries over unreliability. Reports say that a Mercedes spokesman says the engines used for this weekend’s race were initially scheduled for use again at the Hungaroring later this summer – this being a much less power intensive circuit than the track in Montreal.
This decision applies to Mercedes AMG’s Lewis Hamilton & Valtteri Bottas, Williams’ Lance Stroll & Sergey Sirotkin, as well as Force India’s Sergio Perez & Esteban Ocon.
There’s lots of other upgrades for the other teams; Renault are bringing their latest spec power unit along for use this weekend. While only expected to yield a small boost in power, Daniel Ricciardo will take a grid penalty for changing to a new MGU-K after his burnt out in Monaco. This automatic grid penalty means he will also take the new engine to ensure its added to his usable parts list. It hasn’t been confirmed which of the other five Renault powered cars will take the new engine.
Honda also roll out a new specification upgrade for Toro Rosso, which will apply to Pierre Gasly & Brendon Hartley.
