Mercedes believe they have solved the solution to their engine dramas that punctuated the team’s pre-season testing regime.
The team flew their worrisome power units back it the engine headquarters in Brixworth to analyse why the engines frequently failed over the two weeks of testing.
Now, six-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton is confident that his team will quickly understand the situation and implement the necessary repairs.
“Is it a concern? For sure,” said Hamilton. “Normally in pre-season testing, we’ve got much more confidence in the reliability, so it’s not been perfect for us. We’re on our third engine already, so it’s definitely not an easy or relaxed scenario for us.
“The engine is actually very good, and an improvement from last year.
“It’s just not quite where we want it to be reliability-wise
“But I have every confidence in the Mercedes factory that they’ll analyse and do the best they can over the next two weeks to make sure that we’ll start off, again, on the right foot.”
Mercedes team Principal Toto Wolff also stressed his faith in the team to get on top of any issues prior to the first race in Melbourne. The team boss was pleased that any engine dramas were discovered during testing, allowing his engineers’ ample opportunity to work on a solution.
“We’re glad that we encountered these issues in testing rather than at a race weekend as we could work on fixing them without any penalties,” Wolff said.
The Australian Grand Prix begins with opening Free Practice from midday this Friday.
