Engine failure
On a Saturday that revealed to the world the clear supremacy of Mercedes compared to the competition in this first chapter of Formula 1’s new technical era, there are however also some headaches for the house of the star. Not with the official team but with the customers, in particular with Williams. The Grove-based team uses, as do McLaren and Alpine, the power unit built in the Brixworth factory. Something, however, went wrong with the FW48 engines because only Alex Albon took part in the Melbourne qualifying, setting the 15th fastest time; while the Thai driver is bitter about the result, Carlos Sainz is much worse off, as he didn’t even manage to take to the track in Q1. The reason? precisely a problem with the Mercedes power unit. Who knows if this also represents a small alarm bell for Toto Wolff.
Read more Antonelli, the front row is safe: Mercedes fined
“It has been a very difficult weekend – commented the very disappointed former Ferrari driver – and we had reliability issues in both sessions. It’s a shame because we seemed to have no problems during both tests in Bahrain, so coming here and only doing FP1 and the start of FP2, losing both of today’s sessions, is frustrating. Hopefully we can get back to racing tomorrow and gain experience and good lessons, given that we are already at a disadvantage“.
A long road back up
Confirming the power unit troubles was team principal James Vowles, who also wanted to compliment Mercedes, his former team: “We haven’t had a quiet weekend at all, with only one car on track in qualifying due to some reliability issues with the engine. We know we are struggling and that our winter was difficult, but we have clear ideas on where we need to improve – and quickly – and there are already programs underway to achieve these goals. Our plan for tomorrow is to bring both cars to the finish line – Vowles further commented – so that we can use what we learned here and put it into practice in Shanghai next weekend. Congratulations to Mercedes for today’s one-two finish: that is the benchmark and gives us something to aim for“.
Albon, who at least made it onto the track, also spoke about the reliability problems suffered by the team: “Today we gave our best after struggling with some issues during the weekend. We were limited in some free practice sessions, so getting into Q2 was a decent result. There is a lot of work to do and it’s not something that can be solved overnight, but we will continue to push and try to resolve the reliability issues and the limitations we have identified. For tomorrow I think we can expect a bit of chaos, especially at the start, and not many teams have been able to do proper long runs due to the red flags during the weekend, so there could be an interesting situation. From our position, we hope for a bit of chaos and we will try to maintain a clean drive and take advantage of every opportunity in the race”, he concluded.
Read more Mercedes: the source of the advantage disorients Ferrari and Red Bull
