Mercedes confirm car and engine updates to come despite Toto Wolff comments

Mercedes

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Mercedes confirm car and engine updates to come despite Wolff comments

Wolff had said there would be no more upgrades on the W12

Ian Parkes

Tuesday 29 June 2021 13:38

Mercedes WILL bring car and engine updates over the next few F1 races despite the remarks of team principal Toto Wolff following the Styrian Grand Prix.

After witnessing Red Bull's comprehensive win on their own circuit, Wolff stated that "we have stopped developing for this year because we believe the next years are so important to get right".

Technical director James Allison has revealed, however, Mercedes does have some car development to come that was on the cards before the team opted to make its switch to the all-new 2022 machine and the vast change in regulations.

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Similarly, Mercedes High Performance Powertrains is working on tweaks to the power unit on the reliability side, as Honda recently introduced with Red Bull ahead of the French GP.

"We have a reasonable number of things that are going to make our car faster in the coming races, and let's hope they prove sufficient," said Allison, speaking on the F1 Nation podcast.

When Wolff's comments were highlighted, Allison added: “I don't think those two things are at odds with each other. And I don’t think Toto has said precisely that.

“What Toto points out is that next year's rules are a big-and-hairy affair and they demand a huge amount of our attention, and so most of the focus of our factory has switched over to next year, the performance discovery for next year.

“But that doesn't mean there aren't things still in the food-chain from prior to that focus switch, and furthermore, it isn't all of the factory.

"Furthermore, we're only one of two factories, there's also the PU factory and there is a little bit more to come also from the PU.

“So there's some more aerodynamic change in the offing, a little bit of PU, we hope, on the delivery side, and just a few things that are not quite as tidy as we would wish, that we still have got the opportunity to put right while this season is still very much alive and hot.”

Mercedes uphill struggle in face of this year's rule change

Allison, who takes on the new role of chief technical officer inside Mercedes from July 1, has conceded the team has struggled to get on top of this year's regulations that cut downforce to assist with tyre safety.

Mercedes has suffered four consecutive defeats for the first time in the current turbo-hybrid era and now trails Red Bull in the constructors' standings by 40 points.

“Ever since the rule changes that were introduced aerodynamically for looking after the tyres, we have found it hellishly hard to find the sort of performance gain rate that we did previously prior to those rules, so that has made our life trickier than we wished it to be,” added Allison.

Assessing the morale inside the team following the poor run by Mercedes' incredibly high standards, Allison said: "We're a racing car team, and racing car teams want to win races. They don't want to just compete in them.

"We, of course, wish to get the very maximum out of our car and our driver, and we did a fair job at that last weekend.

"We're, of course, going to be frustrated until we have put something down on the Tarmac that is just the quickest, and we won't be particularly satisfied until we're doing that.

"So morale is, of course, a little chastened by the fact that we have that challenge ahead of us to deliver on putting the quickest car on the road."