Lewis Hamilton is hoping Ferrari’s expected power advantage can be nullified by a new Mercedes engine in Canada.
This weekend is seen as the best chance the Italian team has had for a while to challenge the Silver Arrows for victory, mostly due to the long straights and fairly simple corners at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
But whereas the Scuderia brought their first power unit upgrade in Barcelona last month, Mercedes has been able to hold off until now and the sole fact the engine is new could be important Hamilton believes.
“It’s always great when you have a new engine, being that it’s fresh,” he said in Montreal on Thursday.
“This is a power circuit so it’s come at the perfect time. If you look at previous years, this is the race we always bring our second engine.
“And it’s phase two so it’ll have all new mods, slight improvements everywhere. It’s not massive, it’s not like at the beginning of the hybrid era where you took massive steps forward, it’s just small steps.”
Still every little helps with Mercedes hoping for a seventh straight win to begin the season and Hamilton hopes for a third triumph in a row.
“The biggest difference is it’s brand new, it’s fresh. The old engine that’s done six races will have degradation etcetera,” Hamilton continued.
“The guys have worked so hard, it’s now small percentages but they’re very much appreciated.”
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Throughout this year, it has been the W10 chassis that has given Mercedes their clear advantage, something that has signalled a change in approach from five years ago.
“In the early days of the power unit regulation change, we had a car that was a low-drag, fast car on the straights carried by the might of the engine,” team boss Toto Wolff explained via F1i.com.
“Over the years I think chassis and power unit have merged in order to extract the optimum lap time. And half of that was that the engine is still impressive, but we were able to wrap a chassis around it that has more downforce and more drag.
“We are not the quickest car anymore on the straights but we believe that the best compromise between these two blocks of performance works well for us.”
