Mercedes F1 engine optimizations have cured altitude weaknesses

The German manufacturer had come to the race in Mexico City because it feared that title rival Red Bull would have a significant performance advantage in terms of both power and downforce.

In the past, the Red Bull Honda engine and Honda turbo have proven to be more suitable for operation in the less dense Mexican air.

But contrary to expectations, Mercedes led all three sessions in qualifying, with Valtteri Bottas leading Lewis Hamilton in the crucial Q3 session.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said afterwards that the weekend’s evidence shows that the power gap between the engines has been wiped out.

“We have optimized it for these conditions,” explains Wolff.

“In the end you try to extract the performance of the aggregates via the calendar, and the outliers are somehow difficult to take into account.

“But it’s more of a voting question. It’s not that we’ve turned the engine upside down. We just understand better why it didn’t work at high altitude. “

Wolff’s comments on the Mercedes engine, which is now in better shape, were supported by Williams’ director of vehicle performance, Dave Robson, who says the change was noticeable.

“It’s better to deal with altitude than in 2019, I can rightly say,” said Robson.

“Part of it is just the natural evolution of the past two years. But yeah, they made some changes that make it better to run here. “

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The work Mercedes did on its aggregate for Mexico proved crucial in giving Bottas and Hamilton the opportunity to overtake Red Bulls Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez, who had led his World Cup-leading team-mate in FP3.

However, Wolff admitted that a lockout in the front row was far from what the team expected before qualifying.

“We were all surprised,” he said.

“It was pretty clear that Max would take pole and that it would be a fight between us and Checo for the other positions.

“Then we could see that qualifying was really about to come. On the medium we started to really outdo them and at no point in Q3 did they get a head start on any of the laps.

“I also think they were behind on the last lap. So yes, that’s what makes the sport so fascinating for me that you can swing from one session to the other performance.

“We saw it to our disadvantage in Austin, and now it’s to our advantage here in Mexico.”

Additional coverage from Luke Smith and Alex Kalinauckas