Mercedes cancel plan to introduce new power unit in Canada

2018 Canadian Grand Prix

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Mercedes has abandoned its plan to introduce a new version of its Formula 1 power unit at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix.

The team intended to use ‘PU2’ for the first time at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve but said on Wednesday a “quality issue” has led them to delay its introduction. The change of plan affects all three Mercedes-powered teams, which will continue to use their original-specification engines this weekend.

Mercedes now intends to supply its new engine to all its teams to the French Grand Prix.

The 11th-hour change of plan comes just 24 hours after Mercedes executive director Toto Wolff said in a team statement that the upgrade would be used by all its teams. “We are pushing hard to bring more performance to the car as soon as possible,” said Wolff at the time.

Renault has already confirmed it will introduce the ‘spec B’ version of its power unit this weekend, though it remains to be seen which of the six Renault-powered drivers will have access to it.

Honda will also bring an update to the Canadian Grand Prix for Toro Rosso. According to Honda the goal of the upgrade is increasing the power output from the internal combustion engine.

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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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9 comments on “Mercedes cancel plan to introduce new power unit in Canada”

  1. Damn… These guys are insane if they can make it 8 races without a change on their power units..

    1. @krichelle Canada will be the seventh for their original power units, so they were always going to have to use these units for another race somewhere along the lines (assuming they’ll do seven races per engine).

      1. Matteo (@m-bagattini)
        7th June 2018, 9:12

        Love the fact that you linked “Formula 1” to https://www.racefans.net/tag/f1/ @keithcollantine :)

        1. @keithcollantine @m-bagattini i’m guessing that’s an SEO thing. not sure if it’s a good idea because it might seem like a misleading link – depends how clever/stupid the search engine (google) algorithm is for that kind of thing. in principle it’s a good idea (strong internal linking helps many sites e.g. wikipedia) unless a link to “Formula 1” should (in the eyes of the algo) be going to f1.com or something.

      2. @keithcollantine not really keith. The first power unit only do 6 races as they need to do all practice sessions while the 2nd power unit can be used for 8th races as the 1st power unit can do some of the practice session later in the year. Same goes for the 3rd power unit

  2. Vettel fan 17 (@)
    7th June 2018, 0:01

    Woah, that’s going to effect Canada massively if they don’t bring it. Ferrari may keep ahead of Mercedes as they did in Baku, but also Williams and Force India, I though they may do good like in Baku but they may struggle here.

    1. Conversely, if Mercedes do end up doing well here, it will be extremely disheartening to all those teams who have brought their second spec engines!

      1. Crofty would have a heart attack… “Gasly passes Hamilton for the lead!!”

  3. Hamilton will be yelling “Formula E engine, Formula E engine” when Raikonnen or Riccardo overtaking him on straight line..

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