Mercedes wary about reliability issues ahead of British GP

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says his Formula 1 team will remain “vigilant” heading into this weekend’s British Grand Prix after encountering recent reliability problems.

Despite taking eight wins from the opening nine races, the German manufacturer suffered reliability scares with both its W10 cars in Canada on a weekend Wolff described as Mercedes’ “biggest struggle” of the season to that point.

Mercedes suffered engine setbacks with Lance Stroll’s Racing Point and George Russell’s Williams in Canada and France, while the team was forced to perform “open-heart surgery” on the power unit and gearbox of Hamilton’s car following the discovery of a sensor issue ahead of qualifying at Paul Ricard.

It faced further drama during Austrian Grand Prix practice on Friday when Valtteri Bottas was forced to revert to an old power unit, while Mercedes’ was struck by overheating issues that hampered its race-day performance and led to its worst result of the season with Bottas finishing third and Hamilton a lowly fifth.

“We've also had a number of reliability issues that could have easily robbed us of a considerable amount of points, so we know that we need to stay vigilant and perform to the best of our abilities if we want to be in the fight this weekend,” Wolff said.

“Austria exposed the biggest vulnerability of our car and it meant we couldn't challenge for the win at any point of the weekend.

“We've been working on our cooling for a while, but the combination of high temperatures and altitude in Spielberg ultimately meant that we had to do too much temperature management to be competitive.

“We will continue to work on this to have a better fighting chance at future races in the heat.”

But Wolff does not expect a repeat of its overheating issues again at this weekend’s race, with temperatures forecast to be much cooler at Silverstone than compared to the Austrian Grand Prix weekend.

“Fortunately, the English summer is known for more moderate temperatures, so cooling should not be a major issue for us in Silverstone - although we've learned in the past that the weather at the British GP can be highly changeable,” he explained.

“Silverstone is a sensational track and the sweeping corners demand a lot from the drivers and the car. We've had some of our best performances this year on tracks with a wide range of corner speeds, so on paper we should be in relatively good form.”