The F1 Spanish GP ended ten laps earlier for Mercedes junior Kimi Antonelli, as he suffered an engine failure, and according to technical director James Allison, the power unit is being dismantled at the factory in Brixworth, as there is no clear answer on why it failed.
Mercedes targets to identify the issue
Mercedes aims to identify the issue, recommend fixes for all race engines, including customer teams, and prevent further failures this season, Allison explains. While a new PU can be used without penalty in Canada this weekend, the failure strains the team’s engine pool, requiring careful resource management for the rest of 2025.
“We don’t know what let go in the PU yet. It’s made its way back to Brixworth. They’ll dismantle it, figure out what’s let go, work out what they need to do as recommendations for the whole pool of race engines, not just in our team, but also in the customer teams as well. And hopefully we won’t see any repeat of it in the remainder of the season,” says Allison in Mercedes’s latest YouTube video.
“It puts some pressure on the pool. So we could put in a new power unit next race weekend, suffer no penalties because we’re still below the maximum number you’re allowed to use in a year without penalty. But of course, we’re only a third of the way through the year and so a bit more. And so that’s going to put quite a strain on the remainder of the pool if we have to eke it out till the end of the year.
“So we’ll be just eyeballing up how to marshal those remaining resources in a good way. It’s obviously no fun when a power unit comes out of the pool before delivering its full life.”
Allison notes “tough pill to swallow” and praises Antonelli after F1 Spanish GP
Antonelli, who is sitting in seventh place in the drivers’ standings with 48 points to his name, is being praised by Allison for his positive work and his impressive tyre management during the Spanish GP.
“Kimi’s young and full of all the optimism of youth. But I absolutely know that our failures in this period have taken a few chunks out of Kimi along the way. You know, two DNFs, one caused by a chassis problem, one caused by a PU problem in just three races. That’s a pretty tough pill to swallow“, says the Briton.
“Leaving that aside and Kimi looking in it himself, he will know that he’s got more to find. But in amongst that, there’s been a lot of very positive work with him and brilliant experience for him running on a very dynamic track like it was in Barcelona with the track temperatures pushing up towards 50 degrees and managing soft tyres in those conditions. That is just putting experience into him at a very fast rate. And he was handling it pretty well.”