Mercedes AMG Petronas brought an updated power unit to Monza, for their second PU change of the season. However, efficiency – not power – was the aim. Over the Italian Grand Prix weekend, Andy Cowell was able to shed some light on the breaking story that the 2014 Constructors Champions had spent all of their seven development tokens in one hit, with the development .Sp5rl!47r contributing to the teams 2016 power unit plans. By that logic, it can be assumed now that a homologation date has been set for 2016 PU development and that Mercedes will have technically spent 32 tokens on next years PU, by taking into account the 25 tokens available next season added to the seven the teams have just spent.

“Then with the development activity going on in the factory, you get tempted by Spa and Monza in terms of the performance reward…the full throttle type tracks etc., so we took the decision this week that we would introduce our development engine and all of that work which really, probably three months of that work was probably focused on Melbourne 2016.” explained Cowell.

Seven tokens doesn’t necessarily mean a giant increase in torque and horsepower. That wasn’t the goal or intention with this upgrade phase; instead, Mercedes worked closely together with their partner and title sponsor Petronas, the focus primarily on combustion and efficiency where power is only a by-product.

Petronas have brought along a new and specially developed fuel and respective lubricants for use exclusively on the new spec power unit, which Andy Cowell confirmed that the power unit was optimised for use with the new Petronas fuel and vice versa.

“The fuel is specific to this engine, if you put this fuel in the old engines, it wouldn’t work as well. If you put the old fuel in this engine it wouldn’t work as well.” said Cowell.

Three of the seven tokens have been spent on combustion, which includes the ports, piston crown, combustion chamber, valve geometry, timing, lift, injector nozzle, coils and spark plugs. Cowell wouldn’t expand further as to where the other four tokens were spent, but did indicate that the four tokens were related to combustion. You could assume that the four tokens could have been spent in any of the following:

Injection System

Trumpet Inlet System

Throttle Inlet System

Lubrication

Friction coatings

Oil pressure pumps

Oil scavenge systems

Oil recuperation

Valve axis positioning