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Mercedes lost almost the entire first morning of Formula 1 pre-season testing in Bahrain with a gear shift problem that prompted a gearbox change.
As F1’s benchmark team in the V6 turbo-hybrid era it is odd to see Mercedes suffer the first major setback and this season is an even worse time than usual for that to occur.
In recent years testing has taken place over six-to-eight days in Spain, but that has changed to just a single-three day test in Bahrain for 2021. Mileage is always at a premium in testing but track time is now scarcer than ever.
To put Mercedes’ loss into perspective, its main rivals completed between 40 and 50 laps while the W12 stayed in the garage having the gearbox changed, and the team worked out what went wrong and what solution is required to resolve it.
Worth the wait! 😉 W12 hits the track for its first laps 🖤 pic.twitter.com/Fo9zkR0fbT
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 12, 2021
That means Mercedes is already more than 250km behind its most productive competitors, and more than a full Bahrain Grand Prix distance behind the busiest team so far (AlphaTauri).
Laps completed when Valtteri Bottas rejoined:
AlphaTauri 61
Alpine 49
Ferrari 48
Alfa Romeo 48
Red Bull 47
McLaren 44
Aston Martin 39
Williams 31
Haas 7
Mercedes 2
That’s a lot of time to lose from establishing correlations with its new aerodynamic concepts, validating engine reliability, plus whatever Mercedes had set aside for performance investigations and understanding the change in Pirelli’s tyres.
The other consequence is on driver seat time. Mercedes has planned to split its running between Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton every day. That will remain the case, so Bottas has lost almost one-third of his available testing allowance. It means he risks heading into the season opener fractionally less comfortable and less prepared in his understanding of the car and, crucially, the new tyres.
However, Mercedes’ ambition will be to get that mileage back later in the week. Since identifying the failure and committing to the gearbox change, it will have been rejigging its run plan. These are set a long time in advance, sometimes weeks ahead of testing, and they are tailored to what teams need to prioritise for various departments.
Mercedes will have fit as much of this as possible into Friday’s programme but this also fits into the wider picture of what the team wanted to achieve from the whole test.
A key task this morning has therefore been to work out the best compromise in light of the unplanned gearbox change.
Some items will need to be sacrificed today, but it is possible Mercedes can adapt in a way that – with a busier rest of the test – the team ends the weekend with as much running as it planned. It’ll just be a bit more tired than expected at the other end!
Another consequence of the early nature of this setback is that before Mercedes can throw itself into the revised run plan, it will need to conduct the systems checks that would have otherwise been ticked off first thing.
Perhaps the sole outlap in the morning was enough for some checks, but Mercedes will not be able to get into serious mileage and data-gathering until it is satisfied things are working properly. This could eat away at a little more of its remaining time.
In previous years Mercedes has lost half-days and chunks of running to various problems – including an oil anomaly in 2020 that caused the engine to shut down – yet still ended up comfortably atop the mileage charts.
That will be harder to achieve this time around as there are fewer days to offset the mileage deficit, and this problem occurred at the very start. In the past Mercedes has usually had an ultra-productive testing programme in the bank already.
This is not a crisis for Mercedes but it is a significant setback. And while the specific consequences are no different to any stoppage in any other year, the condensed testing schedule for this season means they probably hit the team’s programme harder than usual.
