Toto Wolff says Mercedes is “holding on for life” amid reliability issues

News from Formula 1: Christian Horner also considers this to be a very unusual moment for the Silver Arrows. Why is there so much talk about Mercedes this week? Will Lewis Hamilton miss the race? Has Valtteri Bottas been replaced? None of that, please.

Rather, it’s something that the F1 the team never expected – the reliability of the engine. Still feeling like this shouldn’t be a big deal? Take this: three brand new PUs were “bought” by the drivers for this week.

One of the three drivers happens to be the works Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas. Much to Toto’s horror, he said that these problems “keep coming back.”

“I think we understand how much better it is,” said Wolff. “But it does mean there is no shelf life to operate them, and that means that there may be a DNF risk to it.”

Formula 1 news: how bad is it? Is there a way out?

Simply put – it’s bad. So bad that there are even reports that Lewis could get another grid drop as he is about to get a new PU component.

“I think you can see that we are suffering from reliability this year,” said the Mercedes team boss.

“We’re going to the sixth engine, I think it’s for Valtteri and we didn’t choose. But on the contrary, we are trying to get a grip on the problems and we have not fully understood them.

“I think we are now one step closer, so it is not always easy to have the engines. We are committed to supplying all customers, and that is not trivial. “

Toto even mentioned that Mercedes is pushing the engines so hard because of the close battle with Red Bull that it costs the team many valuable points.

“We try to improve every year, and this year we’ve got to a point where it has cost us points. For the past seven or eight years, that mindset has brought us races and championships.

“So I would have hoped for a few fewer penalties and fewer engines, but this year it hit us hard.”

Although the McLaren & Aston Martin customer teams also have to fight for a championship, they are not as important as the Mercedes-Red Bull battle.

“McLaren and Aston Martin are luckier and in that respect we just have to get it going and do the best job possible.”

To answer the above question, there is no easy way out. Mercedes & Red Bull can only hope that they will not have to give their star drivers another starting penalty.

We would know better what happens next if we leave the USA without penalties for Max & Lewis. With only five races left to COTA, the PUs should do the job, but never say never!