F1 News
Wolff trusts organisation: 'You can't pinpoint engine problems to that'
- GPblog.com
Things aren't quite running smoothly for Mercedes when it comes to their reliability. Valtteri Bottas will start the race again with a grid penalty after changing his internal combustion engine (ICE), which also leaves Lewis Hamilton uncertain about the reliability of his components. Team boss Toto Wolff denies the problems have arisen following the departure of a key leader.
Bottas is already grabbing his sixth ICE of the season and Mercedes cannot guarantee that Hamilton will make it to the end of the season without changing to his fifth internal combustion engine. Mercedes can't take any chances, as a retirement for the Briton will have major consequences for the championship.
Andy Cowell left Mercedes last year. Cowell was the leader of Mercedes' High-Performance Powertrains department and also helped produce the F1 engines. There have been suggestions that Cowell's departure has caused problems for the German team, but Wolff says that is not true. Cowell's replacement Hywel Thomas is very experienced, according to Wolff.
Wolff still confident
"The strength of the organisation is its depth. Andy is clearly an exceptional personality that contributed in his day, but so is Hywel, and everybody besides him", Wolff says on Motorsport.com. Thomas has been working on Mercedes engines since 2004.
"I have 100 percent confidence in the structure that we have today. Engine developments are not something that happens overnight. It has a long lead time when things go right or things go wrong. Andy was a massive part of our past success but so was Hywel and everybody else. So I don't think you can pinpoint it to one of the leaders having decided to leave the organization. They're still really profound strengths within the organisation."