梅赛德斯：迈凯伦2026引擎劣势或与投入不足有关
梅赛德斯对客户车队迈凯伦未能像厂队那样充分发挥2026年F1动力单元性能的问题提出了自己的解释，认为迈凯伦的引擎劣势可能与其投入不足有关，而非单纯的技术问题。
梅赛德斯对于客户车队迈凯伦为何无法像厂队那样充分发掘其2026年F1动力单元的潜力，有着不同的解释。
卫冕冠军迈凯伦未能像梅赛德斯那样从动力单元中获得同样多的性能，一直是今年冠军争夺战发展中幕后的一大话题，而且据悉这至少让迈凯伦感到些许沮丧——车队至少曾暗示过这一点，尽管从未公开完整表达过。
回到7月的银石站，当时迈凯伦对厂队梅赛德斯赛车在排位赛中使用的动力小技巧表示惊讶，车队领队安德烈亚·斯特拉说：“我们与高性能动力系统部门（HPP，即梅赛德斯高性能动力系统部门）在技术层面确实有持续的沟通，以确保我们用上这台动力单元所能提供的一切，它非常出色。这确实是一项伟大的技术。它蕴藏着大量性能，而这些性能也藏在使用细节之中。
"……我们当然还需要与高性能动力系统部门继续讨论其他一些因素，因为当我们观察直道上的表现时，即便考虑到他们（梅赛德斯）的风阻可能更小，仍然存在一些疑问。"
迈凯伦在本赛季初根据梅赛德斯提供的早期信息所选定的较短齿比，正是形成差异的一个因素。
但据梅赛德斯车队副领队布拉德利·洛德表示，动力单元运用方面的任何差异，其核心原因只是简单的知识产权流程和开支问题，而不是梅赛德斯有意给厂队任何偏袒。
“一切都符合规则，一切也都符合合同。我认为迈凯伦和其他客户车队，即阿尔派和威廉姆斯，都是非常出色的合作伙伴，他们提出高要求是理所当然的。他们选择梅赛德斯，是因为他们希望与一家能提供卓越支持和优秀产品的公司合作，”洛德说。
“位于布里克沃思的动力单元团队在过去多年为客户提供引擎供应的过程中已经证明，他们始终以非常公平和正确的方式行事。”
"在某些方面，或许不可避免地会出现一些被认为存在差距的地方，或者他们（客户车队）……感觉自己可能落后一步，尤其是在……大量的模拟工具方面，也就是预测动力单元和底盘等部件表现的能力上。
"而这些工具当中有许多是我们不仅在不克斯沃思、而且是在梅赛德斯底盘部门与不克斯沃思的高性能动力总成部门（HPP）之间共同开发的——当然，技术规则对于底盘部门的技术知识产权哪些可以在车队之间共享、哪些不可以，规定得非常明确。
"因此，在某些情况下，需要先做一些拆解梳理工作，才能把某些部分提供给客户车队——或者客户车队自己也需要开展工作并投入资金，把自己的预算上限资源投入到开发这些工具上，才能最大限度地发挥动力单元的性能。
"所以这大概是我们遇到复杂问题的一个方面——但在一套全新的规则体系下，而且是一套比以前更复杂的新规则体系下，这是可以理解的。
去年是该规则周期的最后一个赛季，迈凯伦在车队积分榜上以364分的优势击败了梅赛德斯，但目前却落后159分——不过凭借兰多·诺里斯，车队在匈牙利大奖赛上确实实现了统治级表现。
车队在夏休期间发布了对性能技术总监马克·坦普尔的采访，进一步揭示了动力单元使用方面的具体情况，印证了洛德所说的部分内容，同时也强调了车队目前作为客户车队的一个根本性特点，即处于'主要决策圈之外'。
"我认为其中一部分原因在于你对设计和安装有多大的影响力。我们确实有相当大的参与度，但最终梅赛德斯厂队要和高性能动力单元部门就相关事项拥有最终决定权。这不应被理解为我们的意见被忽视——只是最终我们不是完全掌握控制权的一方。
"高性能动力单元部门在比赛周末的工作方式是设立一个主队和若干客户支持团队。我们与客户支持团队密切合作，并与主项目组的人员保持着良好的关系。通过这种合作，我们对主项目组的运作有一定影响力——但我们无法保证他们会接受我们提出的要求。
"在这一点上，我们稍微游离于主流程之外，在一个为整个项目提供输入的支线流程中工作，但这意味着我们并不总是能得到我们想要的、适合我们的配置。"
"时间安排上也是一样。在临近比赛时，我们会从高性能动力单元部门接收信息，但有些决策和演进我们并不参与其中。当我们得知自己拿到了什么的时候，往往没有太多时间来做出反应和调整——所以我们今年努力做的事情之一，就是建立并改进我们的流程，让这一点不再成为那么大的限制。"
坦普尔表示，这需要进一步发展并让迈凯伦新成立的"动力单元性能团队"（power unit performance team）逐渐适应——"我们以前没有这样的团队"。"
"作为一项常规工作，HPP会进行模拟，并针对特定赛事和给定的练习阶段提出一套配置，同时给出多种不同的方案，说明如何在一圈内最好地利用能量。"
"然后，我们要用我们的工具以及MCL40赛车的具体要求来核对，还要考虑风向、抓地力水平、油箱里的燃油量等变量，等等。所以，我们会探索所有这些因素，并与我们认为是最佳的方案进行对比，然后向我们的比赛工程师以及高性能动力单元部门的工程师提出建议。
"这是一个非常协作的过程——但我们使用工具的方式有所不同，实际上我们的工具也与高性能动力单元部门略有不同，所以这是两种方法的结合。"
英文原文
Mercedes has a different explanation for why customer team McLaren has not been able to exploit its 2026 Formula 1 power unit as effectively as the works operation.
Defending champion McLaren not getting as much out of the power unit as Mercedes has been one of the major behind-the-scenes topics in the development of this year's title fight, and has been known to be a source of at least mild frustration for McLaren - one it has at least hinted at, if never fully expressed publicly.
Back at Silverstone in July, where McLaren expressed surprise at the qualifying power trick being used by the factory Mercedes cars, team principal Andrea Stella said: "There's definitely conversations ongoing with HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] at technical level to make sure that we use what is available in this power unit, which is brilliant. It's a really piece of great technology. There's a lot of performance, which is also in the details of the exploitation.
"...Definitely there's some other factors that we need to keep discussing with HPP, because when we look at the performance in the straights, even taking into account the fact that they [Mercedes] may have less drag, there's still some question marks."
The shorter gear ratios picked by McLaren at the start of the year based on early Mercedes info have been one such point of differentiation.
But according to Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord, simple intellectual property logistics and matters of spending - rather than any deliberate strategy from Mercedes to give its factory team a leg up - have been central to any difference in power unit exploitation.
"Everything is in the rules and everything is in the contract. I think McLaren and the other customer teams, Alpine and Williams, are great partners to work with, they're rightly demanding. They've chosen Mercedes because they choose to work with a company that provides excellent support and a great product," said Lord.
"The [power unit] team at Brixworth have proven over the last however-many-years of customer supply that they do that in a very even-handed and correct way.
"Where there have perhaps inevitably been perceptions of differences, or they [customers] have...felt potentially one step behind is in the...a lot of the simulation tools, the ability to predict behaviour of the power unit and the chassis and things like that.
"And a lot of those toolsets are things that we've developed not just at Brixworth but between MGP [Mercedes F1 team] chassis team and HPP at Brixworth - and obviously the technical regulations are very clear on what chassis team IP can and cannot be shared between teams as well.
"So, in some instances there is unpicking that needs to be done before elements can be then provided to the customer teams - or the customer teams themselves are needing to do work and spend, invest their own cost cap resource into developing the tools to be able to get the most from the power unit.
"So that's probably one of the complexities that we've bumped into - but kind of understandable in a brand new ruleset and a new ruleset that is more complex than the previous one."
McLaren beat Mercedes by 364 points in the constructors' standings last year, the final season of that regulation cycle, but currently trails by 159 points - though it did dominate the Hungarian Grand Prix with Lando Norris.
An interview it released with technical director for performance, Mark Temple during the summer break shed some more light on matters of power unit exploitation, and backed up some of what Lord said, while also stressing a fundamental "out of the main loop" characteristic of the team's customer status right now.
"I think some of it comes from how much influence you have over the design and the installation. We do have considerable input, but ultimately MGP [the Mercedes race team] have the final say with HPP on what happens. That shouldn't be taken to mean we're ignored - we're ultimately just not the ones in complete control.
“The way HPP work on a race weekend is with a main team and customer support teams. We work very closely with our customer support team and have good relationships with people in the main programme. From that, we have influence on what's happening within the main programme - but we don't have guarantees they'll accept things we request.
"We're a little out of the main loop in that respect, working in a side loop that feeds into the programme, but it means we don't always get the configurations we want and that would suit us.
"It's the same with the timeline. In the run-up to a race, we receive information from HPP, but there's decision-making and evolution we're not part of. When we find out what we've got, there's often not a huge amount of time to react and respond - so part of what we're trying to do this year is build and improve our process to make this less of a limitation."
Temple indicated this was a matter of further developing and acclimatising McLaren's new "power unit performance team, which we didn't have before".
"As a normal activity, HPP will do simulations and come up with a configuration for a particular event and a given session and present a multitude of different options of how best to use energy around the lap.
"We want to then check that against our tools and the specific requirements of the MCL40, plus variables like the wind direction, the grip level, the amount of fuel in the tank, and so on. So, we explore all of those things and compare them against what we think is optimal and then make recommendations to our race engineers alongside the HPP engineers.
"It's a very collaborative process - but we use some of our tools differently, and indeed have slightly different tools, to HPP, so it's a combination of the two approaches."
The Race ·
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