But now, it emerges that Mercedes has in fact delayed the planned introduction by one race.
"We wanted to use the second power unit this weekend, but a quality problem means we've moved it to the French grand prix," a spokesman is quoted as saying by the German media.
It is good news for Ferrari, whose championship contender Sebastian Vettel will use a new engine in power-hungry Canada.
And it's also a crucial weekend for Renault and Honda, with the latter also introducing a new power unit that it hopes will convince Red Bull to make the switch for 2019.
Spanish reports say Honda has signed up a key engineer from Mercedes, Axel Wendorff.
"We are introducing an updated PU for this event, fitting it to both cars," announced Honda's technical boss Toyoharu Tanabe.
"The updates are mainly to the ICE, focusing on improving performance."
I wonder... It might not be a bad idea for the top teams to postpone taking engines as late as possible. This move could actually benefit Merc' in the long run, seeing as A) Canada should be a good track for them anyway, thus they might not need that extra power anyway, and B) they will be able to have that new spec fresh longer than Ferrari and the rest.
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Azerbaijan Grand Prix
C. Sainz jr
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Replies (2)
Login to replycalle.itw
Posts: 8,527
I wonder... It might not be a bad idea for the top teams to postpone taking engines as late as possible. This move could actually benefit Merc' in the long run, seeing as A) Canada should be a good track for them anyway, thus they might not need that extra power anyway, and B) they will be able to have that new spec fresh longer than Ferrari and the rest.
xoya
Posts: 583
Well F me if they didn't do it to try and make Red Bull take Honda power for 2019.