Mercedes could delay new engine upgrade

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has admitted that the team could delay introducing its new engine upgrade. The Austrian has expressed surprise over rivals Ferrari's turn in pace, and says that the German squad is not quite sure how the Maranello team has made such impressive gains.

Wolff previously claimed that Mercedes was losing half a second to Ferrari on the straights. As it looks to close in on the Italian team in terms of engine performance, Wolff says that more time is simply needed, and has backed its head of engine development Andy Cowell to deliver what is required.

"Andy’s a super-motivated guy. All his lieutenants and troops are. We see what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved. At the moment we are in an interesting phase on the third engine and we are trying to extrapolate how much performance gain we can find until Spa and Monza. Only once we know that number we will be able to decide whether we need to postpone or do something else."

But Wolff says that catching up to Ferrari will be no easy task. When asked if Mercedes was capable of such a thing, he said: "It’s very complex and not straightforward at all.

"Because of the maturity of these regulations it’s very difficult to extract additional performance without harming reliability. Every experiment you do that potentially adds performance needs to be validated against reliability because a DNF is going to kill you in the championship much more than the ultimate, last tenth of performance. So it’s very complex to extract more performance in a level that we need to be sufficient. But it’s a challenging target."

Fergal Walsh