F1 News
Mercedes least reliable power unit of 2020: Has the limit been found?
- GPblog.com
In 2019 Ferrari had the strongest engine in Formula 1, while Mercedes even seemed to have to watch out for Honda at one point. By 2020, however, the German manufacturer had struck another major blow. They seem to have pushed the limits.
The fact that Mercedes was a lot faster than Ferrari this season is, of course, partly due to the FIA technical guidelines that hit Ferrari hard, but Honda and Renault were also affected, especially during the first half of the season. However, both seemed to have closed the gap with Mercedes at the end of 2019.
So Mercedes has stretched the limit of its power source and the 2020 reliability figures seem to confirm that suggestion. After sorting out all the failures last season, it appears that cars with a Mercedes power source had as many as seven failures that can somehow be attributed to that power source.
In addition, the real problem was relatively often a defect in one of the elements of the power source, whereas with Honda, electronic problems were more often the cause of a breakdown.
Ferrari most reliable
Both Honda and Renault each had four power source-related outages. After correction for the fact that Mercedes supplies three teams with engines, their average per car is still higher.
Ferrari had by far the best reliability with three teams and only two power-related failures. So you can see that less power is still good for something.