Lewis Hamilton is unsurprisingly not too pleased about the FIA’s plan to ban the use of special engine modes for qualifying.
A letter from the governing body to teams on Wednesday revealed a push to stop the use of what became known as ‘party modes’, which Mercedes have been famously strong at, which are power settings that deliver an increase in performance but can only be used for short periods.
Now though the FIA reportedly wants to stop the process by forcing teams to use the engine mode they used in qualifying for at least a set percentage of the race, making these extreme one-lap ‘party modes’ obsolete.
It is hoped this plan can be implemented in time for the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps later this month, otherwise it will be delayed until 2021.
But as the team most likely to be impacted, along with their customers, Mercedes’ lead driver clearly saw this as nothing more than a tactic to end their dominance.
“It’s not a surprise, they’re always trying to slow us down,” said Hamilton ahead of the Spanish GP. “But it doesn’t really change a huge amount for us so it’s not a problem.
“The guys at our team have just done such a good job with the engine,” he continued. “It’s obviously to slow us down but I don’t think it’s going to get the result that they want but that’s totally fine if they do it.”
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As unsurprising as Hamilton’s negative response was, the positivity from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was equally predictable.
“I guess we will see what happens with that,” he was quoted by Crash.net.
“I think in a way maybe it’s good as we are not really allowed to touch the car after qualifying, except for those kind of things, engine modes, so probably if you want to go down that route anyway by not touching the car I think it’s good you maybe get rid of that as well.
“In qualifying, they [Mercedes] have quite a strong qualifying mode but from our side we know we can do better on the car side and we know we need a bit more power so we need to focus on that,” he added.
Last year the benchmark in single-lap engine performance was set by Ferrari before a series of technical directives resulted in their major drop in power this season.
As a result, their drivers also welcome the move that could see them be more competitive on a Saturday.
“To be honest I don’t think it will affect us so much, so I think it can only be positive for us,” Charles Leclerc said, with Sebastian Vettel then agreeing.
“How much it will be beneficial it’s still to see, but for us I can say that we don’t have anything different from quali to the race so for us I don’t think it will change anything.”