Mercedes says being limited to one engine mode did impact the racing at the Italian Grand Prix.
From Monza, teams are now only permitted to use a single power setting across both qualifying and the race after a technical directive by the FIA as part of a push to better police the engine regulations.
However, one impact of that was, with seemingly very little to choose between the different power units, it resulted in trains of cars all within DRS range of each other leading to little action.
“We always said that one power mode for the whole race means that you haven’t got the extra spice to overtake,” he said afterwards, as reported by Mercedes boss said post-race.
“You haven’t got the extra modes that you may decide or not to deploy in the race to overtake, and that is valid for all the small teams as for the big teams.
“I think that the race is a consequence of that decision.”
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After Valtteri Bottas became stuck in one of those DRS trains, Lewis Hamilton also revealed he struggled to initially pass Alex Albon before an error allowed him through and eventually make his way from 16th to seventh following his penalty.
“We’re just in one mode, and it’s a fast mode that we would use to race on a much shorter part of the race, so the engine felt consistent,” he said.
“The only thing is that it’s worse for racing in the sense of in the past you could move between modes and you had to manage the small amount of strong race engine mode because you only have a certain quota.
“I would imagine that’s probably why you see less overtaking then and perhaps in the past,” he added. “It was more fun to have to manage that and manage the power and utilise it for overtaking.
Daniel Ricciardo would counter Mercedes’ complaints, however…
“We still can drain the battery on the straight if we want a bit more power,” said the Australian.
“So that doesn’t change and really that’s normally your biggest overtaking tool to use so that’s still there. So I don’t really feel much change for the dynamic of the race.”
Ricciardo though was surprised at how easily he could race Valtteri Bottas during last Sunday’s race.
“Valtteri didn’t look particularly quick for their, let’s say, normalcy,” he commented.
“Today in the first stint I got him on Lap 1, and then I expected him to come back by me pretty soon after. He didn’t and I think at some point I was actually pulling away.
“I know we haven’t been slow this weekend but, of course, we’re also not a Mercedes at the moment.
“So I was a little bit surprised.”
There’s also no doubt that Mercedes do remain the clear benchmark on the grid, as proven by their dominant qualifying and Hamilton’s early race pace at Monza.
So much so that McLaren boss Andreas Seidl thinks F1 may need to go further if they want to create more competition before 2022.
“Given the dominance of Mercedes, for which they worked hard for several years to achieve this dominance, of course they also deserve to drive where they drive, and unfortunately that leads to boring races,” he told Motorsport-Total.com.
“So it’s obviously a good thing at the moment when something like Monza happens.
“I believe that the only way to have more interesting races in the next year and a half will be to artificially slow Mercedes down or create some kind of coincidence with reversed grid positions. That is the reality we are in.
“I think that’s the discussion that Mercedes should have with the FIA or Formula 1 if they were open to something like that.”
