[ad_1]
Mercedes has confirmed that they were not racing at full power in Abu Dhabi, but it was not enough to influence the result.
The Silver Arrows seemed a far cry from their usual dominant personality at the Yas Marina circuit, as Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took pole at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, leading every lap for victory.
Meanwhile, Mercedes had no response, and in the final stages Lewis Hamilton was even being threatened by Alex Albon for last place on the podium.
After the race, Max Verstappen suggested that Mercedes still had their engines turned off for the race, something that Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas denied knowing, despite the fact that Mercedes boss Toto Wolff had confirmed that was the case after qualifying. .
And Mercedes Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin has confirmed that the Silver Arrows were running a “conservative” engine mode, although it wasn’t enough to influence the result in such a drastic way.
“I would say that instead of being very aware of a specific problem, we are operating the power unit as conservatively as we can to try to avoid a problem,” he said, quoted by Insideracing. com.
“But when you don’t exactly understand the series of problems, all you can do is be a little cautious.
“During the race, we tried to reduce duty marginally, but you’re right, the drivers wouldn’t necessarily have noticed.
“It was just something we were trying to manage in the background.
“[It was] It is not a quantity that will determine the outcome of the race, you are speaking significantly less than a tenth of a second, so it is not the difference between the first and the second. “
96 days until lights go out in Australia. It’s not that we’re counting or anything … 🙃 pic.twitter.com/hmAl7OoSXu
– Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@ MercedesAMGF1) December 14, 2020
Get the official Mercedes 2020 collection through the Formula 1 store
Wolff echoed Shovlin’s comments, saying Red Bull won the Abu Dhabi GP “fairly.”
“Everybody has weaknesses and we weren’t in our ‘game A’ this weekend, that’s just a given, and Red Bull won fairly,” he said.
“You can see that Albon also had a very good race. They had a very good racing car and that shows that when their car is in the right place, both drivers [can] do a good job.
“Albon’s pace was probably faster than ours at the end, so it could have ended worse for us.
“We came out of this race with a slap on the wrist.”
Follow us on Twitter @ Planet_F1, like our Facebook page and Join us on Instagram!
[ad_2]
