Following the retirements of George Russell (Canada) and Kimi Antonelli (Barcelona), Mercedes now appears to have identified which part of the battery is causing problems
“We can’t afford to have failures on a regular basis or time and time again,” said Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff after the Formula 1 race in Barcelona. Championship leader Kimi Antonelli retired from the race there due to a mechanical failure, after teammate George Russell’s Mercedes W17 had also broken down just two races earlier in Canada.
“We’re going to leave no stone unturned,” Wolff had announced in Spain, and in the meantime, Mercedes has indeed gotten to the bottom of its string of breakdowns. “I believe that most of the risk areas have now been identified,” reveals Chief Technical Officer James Allison on the Mercedes podcast Silver Arrows Radio Show.
Allison clarifies, however, that the problems Mercedes has had with the power unit this year are “not all identical.” But the failures “can be traced, to a certain extent, to the same general area of the battery,” the Briton said.
It wasn’t just the Mercedes factory team that struggled with problems this year; among the customer teams, McLaren was particularly affected. In China, for example, neither Lando Norris nor Oscar Piastri were able to start the race. Here, too, there were (different) issues with the battery in each case.
Allison now emphasizes that these difficulties should be resolved “with a bit of luck” “as we begin to gradually introduce the new modules.” However, this also means that the problems can only be completely resolved by replacing the battery.
“This is, of course, a major issue for us. These retirements are very, very painful,” Allison emphasizes. He explains: “You have to accept that there will be defects. We try to ensure that these defects occur during test drives or on test benches.”
The goal is to ensure that these issues “occur as rarely as possible when we’re out on the track competing for championship points,” he stresses. Mercedes has only partially succeeded in this at the start of the new Formula 1 regulations this year.
At least, however, the team is now confident that it has identified the root cause of the problems.
