Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Mercedes confident in power unit reliability

Mercedes is confident in the reliability of its new power unit after an investigation in to Nico Rosberg's issue ahead of qualifying at Monza.

Rosberg was forced to revert to an old specification of power unit after final practice on Saturday morning, replacing the upgraded engine which Mercedes had introduced for the Italian Grand Prix. Team-mate Lewis Hamilton retained the new unit and qualified on pole position, and the team's investigations have revealed no reliability concerned with Hamilton's specification.

"Overnight investigation has revealed the cause of Nico Rosberg's problem in Italian Grand Prix FP3 yesterday," Mercedes tweeted on Sunday morning. "This was traced to a leak in the cooling system which contaminated the Power Unit, not a problem with the engine itself.

"The Power Unit will be inspected in the coming days to decide if it can be used again at future races."

Rosberg will start from fourth on the grid behind Hamilton and the Ferrari pair of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, and he admits he is at a disadvantage using an old power unit.

"It is a lot of mileage, it has done 6 races and engines degrade over time, so it has definitely compromised my weekend and it will compromise my race as well. It is obviously from the data that the laps are good, but I lose a lot of time on the straights, so that makes it difficult."

Hamilton holds off Ferrari challenge for 11th pole of the season

2016 F1 driver line-ups so far

F1 drivers' girlfriends gallery

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.