Racing
© Spencer
Andrea Stella says McLaren is still not extracting the full potential of its Mercedes HPP power unit, laying bare a modern Formula 1 reality: equal engine hardware does not necessarily mean equal performance.
Speaking at Silverstone, the McLaren team principal said the team still had “a little bit of a deficit” in getting the maximum from the power unit on a weekend where energy deployment mattered heavily. He said the gap to Mercedes was not only about the car itself and added that GPS overlays showed McLaren was still “leaving some performance” on the table.
That is a more significant problem than a simple supply complaint because FIA rules require manufacturers to provide customer teams with the same power unit specification as the works team. In practice, though, responsibility for optimizing that package still sits with the customer team, while the value of software, calibration and MGU-K energy management has grown under the current rules.
Stella pointed to one Silverstone qualifying detail that underlined the difference. Telemetry showed Mercedes drivers George Russell and Kimi Antonelli both lifting slightly before the finish line, something Stella said “surprised” McLaren. He said the team had not discussed that behavior with Mercedes HPP and was not even sure that kind of operating mode was currently available to McLaren, calling it another example of the need to make sure the full potential of the power unit is being used.
The hardware picture has also not been perfectly aligned. FIA documentation for Silverstone showed Alpine and the Williams of Carlos Sainz had already received the latest Mercedes specification, while both McLarens were still running the previous version. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown said: “We would like the current Mercedes engine. We are the only team without the latest power unit, and of course we would have liked to have it available.”
Even so, Stella suggested the missing update may not explain the core performance gap. He said McLaren was still waiting to see whether it could switch to the latest specification and whether that would bring any gain, but added that it “should” mainly be a reliability improvement. He also said there were “definitely further factors” to discuss with HPP because McLaren still had questions over its straight-line speed, even allowing for the possibility of running less drag.
Stella said McLaren had already spoken with Mercedes High Performance Powertrains about the delayed supply, and that the team understood the reasons and continued to trust its engine partner. He said HPP was working under heavy pressure to supply four teams and hoped McLaren would receive the latest specification before the next event.
What McLaren’s Silverstone comments really exposed is the limit of the customer-engine rule itself. The regulations can guarantee the same parts, but they cannot legislate for the deeper operational knowledge inside a works team, and that know-how is increasingly where the last tenths are found.