The new head of Mercedes AMG F1 engines, Hywel Thomas, has caused a stir in the paddock following a video provided by the team itself, in which he warns of certain problems in the development of his new unit power of 2021. Those same statements were already made by Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona last year during the preseason and then dominated more if possible than in the previous one, something that does not escape the analysts, who have taken with some joke the notice that arrives from Brixworth. In terms of preparation, we have many engines under construction at the moment.

And we are preparing for the new season. We already have some of them mounted and we also have engines running on the dyno (bench) at the moment, doing their durability tests. says Thomas, who replaces Andy Cowell this year at the head of engines.”We also have engines for our customers, which we have already shipped to them and which they already have in the rear of their chassis and have started, or are in the process of doing so. One of them is McLaren, a new customer, which joins Aston Martin, Williams, and Mercedes itself.

We have some problems with the power units. We know we have problems, but we have many plans to solve all those problems. I am sure that everything will be ready for the first race”, warns Thomas, in which he elicited many jocular responses in networks, but perhaps it should raise the alert of your rivals.”Winter is always a challenging time for us as we prepare for a new season, and this year we have been thrown some additional challenges. It was the first winter that we had to react to a change in regulations, which limits the number of dynamic hours we can invest.

This means that we have to make every run of the benchmark count and we have to make sure that we are fully productive to know the performance and reliability of the power unit during every hour of work. , says the Brit, although it is nothing the competition has not faced. Just one update, instead of to the main news, however, is that Mercedes, unlike other courses, is going to schedule an updated room throughout 2021, which must be remembered that it has 23 Grand Prix on the Calendar.

It is the first winter in which we have prepared for a single update for the whole season. So we have to put all our performance in the first unit, which goes to the first race (March 28 in Bahrain) while in previous seasons we have been able to divide that into different packages reveals Thomas. With that challenge, we have to get all the performance for the first race and make sure it is completely reliable. Also, there are more races this season and the same number of units (three for the main elements), which means that each engine individual needs to run in more races (almost eight useful life). We just have to make sure we are prepared for that and focus even more on reliability warns the Mercedes engineer.

We also have the challenge of a fairly short winter, since we did not finish running until mid-December and now we are back. So, in any case, we have had more to do and less time to do it he says, without clarifying that Since August 2020, once they had both championships almost won, they put aside the engine of that year and started working on this, something that the rest of the teams could not do. And despite this, they continued to win easily. Hence the hilarity of the reactions to his words. After seven title double seasons, Mercedes hopes to clinch the title 16 in a row.

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