Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMercedes

Mercedes engine upgrade worth 0.3s

The upgraded Mercedes power unit is worth an estimated 0.3s per lap, according to Lotus' Alan Permane.

Mercedes introduced a new power unit at the Italian Grand Prix, with Lewis Hamilton going on to take a dominant victory. The pace shown by both Mercedes cars during Friday practice was described as "frightening" by Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, and Permane - who is trackside operations director for Mercedes customers Lotus - is keen to receive the update if possible.

"I'm told it's 0.3s [at Monza]," Permane told F1i. "I don't know for sure, we haven't spoken to our Mercedes people about it. Of course anything we can get is great, but we're very happy with what we've got at the moment.

"Our third engines went in at Monza and performed faultlessly, but I don't know what the plan is and whether our fourth engine will be the next generation or not."

While Lotus certainly won't have the new Mercedes power unit in Singapore, Permane believes the team should retain the same targets as in Spa and Monza.

"I don't see why we can't do as we've done in the last few; qualify well, put the car in the top ten and race in the top ten. There's no doubt the Renault teams will be a little bit more competitive there, it's not such a demanding track for horsepower, but that will be our target and that's what I think we can achieve."

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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.