Mercedes spends five tokens on power unit upgrade

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Mercedes has spent five tokens on a power unit upgrade, which both drivers have received at the Belgian Grand Prix.

The FIA Technical Delegate's Report shows both Mercedes drivers to have taken a new internal combustion engine (ICE), MGU-H, MGU-K and turbocharger. Mercedes has now confirmed the new engines are due to an upgrade which cost five tokens in total.

With the Mercedes customer teams having only taken new engines in Germany, none of them have the full upgrade but Mercedes says the elements outside of the sealed perimeter have already been fitted to the customers.

The upgrade coincides with Lewis Hamilton's power unit penalties, with the championship leader taking a complete new power unit ahead of FP1 and another ahead of FP2, leaving him with a 30-place grid penalty at present.

With Hamilton all but certain to start on the back row for Sunday's race, Mercedes is likely to take an extra power unit - and associated penalty - for the triple world champion ahead of the final practice session.

Following the most recent spend, Mercedes has six development tokens remaining. The team is provisionally planning to introduce its final new power unit at Suzuka, but says there are no concrete plans to further upgrade the engine at the same time.

Honda has also introduced a power unit upgrade this weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, spending seven development tokens on its latest version.

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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.