25/07/2018
NEWS STORY
As Formula One mourns the passing of Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has echoed the Canadian-Italian's unease at the planned overhaul of the engine regulations in 2021.
Though currently casting doubt on the legality of the Maranello manufacturer's power unit, and in particular its hybrid system, like Marchionne, Wolff is no fan of the proposals offered by the sport's owners.
Indeed, using the logic of 'if it aint broke, don't fix it', Wolff argues that the current formula is fine as it is and all that's needed is further convergence in terms of performance.
The Austrian however, is particularly concerned that as we get nearer to 2021, if the planned overhaul goes ahead, the engine manufacturers will have to go to the expense of two programmes, one for the 2020 units and the other for the new.
To make the situation worse, the manufacturers have yet to receive - far less agree to - the definitive 2021 regulations, and having initially agreed to the dropping of the MGU-H, which it was feared was prohibiting new manufacturers from entering the sport (on cost grounds), the manufacturers are now seeking to retain it arguing that there are no signs of new manufacturers entering F1 anytime soon.
As a result, seeking to retain the MGU-H, Wolff argues that it would be "madness" to go ahead with the planned overhaul of the regulations.
"We have made our standpoint pretty clear that we think, for the sport, the best thing would be not to change a lot," he said.
"Leave it like it is so that the performances of the various engine suppliers converge," he added.
"You need to take into account the sound debate, fuel saving, and maybe we can tweak it a little bit, add a little bit more revs, give more fuel allowance, and I think that would be perfectly enough to have good racing."
With the manufacturers eyeing the ever decreasing lead-in time should the sport go ahead with its plans for a major overhaul, he said: "The risk with knowing soon is that then everybody would start as early as now and develop two engines in parallel, which would be madness in my opinion."