Valtteri Bottas, Mercedes, Baku City Circuit, 2019

All Mercedes teams to run new ‘Phase 2’ power unit

2019 Canadian Grand Prix

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All three Mercedes-powered teams will use the manufacturer’s new version of its power unit this weekend.

Mercedes confirmed they, Racing Point and Williams will all run their ‘Phase 2’ engine at the Canadian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton says he expects the new power unit will bring a “small percentage” improvement.

“The guys back at Brixworth have been working incredibly hard,” he said. “It’s not been the easiest beginning of the year in terms of preparing an engine.

“While it’s an evolution of the previous years each time you’re always trying to push the envelope and there’s so many people working so hard to improve it. It’s not been the smoothest ride but we’ve had great reliability with the first engine.

“It’s always great when you’ve got a new engine being this fresh: This is a power circuit so it’s come at a perfect time. If you look at previous years this is the race we always bring our second engine.

“And it’s a Phase 2 so it’ll have all new mods, slight improvements everywhere. It’s not like at the beginning of the hybrid era where you took massive, massive step, or even last year, it’s just small steps. The biggest difference is it’s brand new, its fresh, the old engine that’s done six races will have degradation etc… but the guys have worked so hard. It’s now small percentages but they’re very much appreciated.”

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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23 comments on “All Mercedes teams to run new ‘Phase 2’ power unit”

  1. I presume this story answers the preceding headline: “Ferrari’s best chance to win since Bahrain?” in the negative? Just saying…

    1. Stroll will be hard to catch.

      1. “Stroll will be hard to catch…..” by the third lap. By four laps, no problem.

  2. F1 part of the MCU* confirmed!

    *Mercedes Championship Universe

    1. Let the auto makers run into financial troubles again like a decade ago, and the grid’ll have its own snap :)

      1. And how is it aligned with Mercedes bringing new engine??

        Apart from other manufacturers they plan to use only 3 pieces a season…

      2. Just looked it up and Phase 2 started with Iron Man 3.
        Not the best of omens for this weekend ;)

        PS: Bernie cameos in all races!

    2. Angry Toto Wolff banging the table with his Infinity Gauntlet…

  3. Said Lewis Hamilton: “The Ferrari’s are still out of our reach for the moment, but this should bring us a little bit closer.” Asked if he fancied his chances he commented: “We’re going to need a miracle guys.”

  4. N.I.C.E!
    Like in New ICE + turbo + other goodies)

    I can understand lack if enthusiasm aboutthis in many, but c’mon, we knew Mercedes will bring new engine one day.
    Here it came.
    Let’s just enjoy another F1 weekend.

    1. You mean enjoy watching the race into turn 1 of lap 1? If it’s Hamilton or Bottas that comes out of there with the lead they might as well wave the checkered flag at the end of the lap. So tired of this crap.

      1. You need a new hobby ,son.

      2. F1oSaurus (@)
        6th June 2019, 20:30

        @jblank Not sure why you direct your misplaced anger at Mercedes. Mercedes can’t help that the other teams (and their drivers) perform so poorly.

      3. If your not happy take it up with ross brawn, liberty media and the fia. They are the clowns who decided to force through aero changes when at the end of last season we had 3 teams fighting for wins. By the end of last season Mercedes, Ferrari and red bull were so close on race pace and then this stupid aero change. It’s their fault that Ferrari had to design a brand new car while they had the best car in f1 last year.

  5. if you don’t accept that there has always been periods of domination in most sports especially this 1. then you don’t understand this sport and sport as a whole. a race is not just about where you finish. but its also about precision while on the limit, delta times. trying to win the race as fast as possible while driving as slow as you can. this is how racing has always been. go ask Sir Sterling Moss. I’m sure he would say the same thing.

  6. All sports are games of chance. If they were not they would be predictable and boring.

    In soccer a penalty good penalty taker will get more of his shots closer to his intention than a bad one, but even good penalty takers shoot over the bar sometimes. Similarly in F1 the most skillful drivers will do better more often, but will still make mistakes, the best engineers will more often produce the best cars, and good strategists will outperform others most of the time. Ferrari strategists may have made more bad decisions this year but they can still make a lot of good ones.

    The change to the current points system (25,18,15,… instead of 8.7.6,…) places much more emphasis on reliability because it penalises failure more. As a result teams which have invested in reliability more than outright performance have been more successful. Of course engineers are going to focus on reliability (i.e. predictability). An engine designed to last 7 races is going to be more reliable than one designed to last a single race and an engine failure costing one race win will now incur a grid penalty in the next race costing more points there. In this way all the rule changes to cut costs are indirectly making the sport less unpredictable and more boring.

    Perhaps the answer to make the sport more unpredictable by other rule changes (e,g, a five lap power reduction for cars which cut a corner).

    Of course we still need to make overtaking easier!

    1. Of course we still need to make overtaking easier!

      Why!? It should be the most difficult aspect of the sport. Pure and simple.

      Should they make scoring goals easier in top flight football? Have a larger tennis ball at Wimbledon? Reduce the size of professional snooker tables? Have the PGA include some crazy golf holes?

  7. Phase 2. It can’t get more exciting than that. And now for the tyre compounds..

  8. Introducing a ne PU does carry some risk although with Mercedes track record I’d expect that it will be flawless.
    It’ll be interesting to see if they match Ferrari’s top end speed.

    My guess is that Leclerc will dominate P1 and P2 , everybody will start saying “Ferrari have the speed to win this one” and then Mercedes will take pole, Ferrari will mess up their race strategy and we’ll have another Merc 1,2 with a close fight for 3rd between :ax and the Ferraris.

    Luckily the mid field battle is interesting – should still be a great weekend and worth getting up a 2am for me.

  9. Toto: Hopefully this update will allow us to challenge the Williams!

  10. I’m not sure if it’s just the marketing machine of F1 at work, but Mercedes cars just look more attractive to me now. Like surely a company that succeeds at this level of F1, continually pushing the envelope further and further every year, with every cycle or “phase” even when they are so far ahead already must also make some pretty incredible engines and cars elsewhere in their company?

    Anyway, hats off to them.

    1. Completely agree. Mercedes have yet again created an absolute beast of a car. It has no weaknesses and whats more worrying for the opposition is that I’m not sure we’ve seen the best out of it yet.

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