To be fair to FIA (while they are absolute idiots), they doesn't likely have conceived the single engine mode directive to target Mercedes. They most probably knew everyone was exploiting the rules, but they didn't exactly know how and to what extent. They would have listened to someone who said, restricting the ICE mode would enable them to stop that exploitation. I don't think they either knew who would get affected to what extent. They thought it's a good idea from stopping manufacturers from exploiting the excess fuel/oil burning.djones wrote: ↑25 Sep 2020, 17:55Looks to be another weekend post rule change where the Honda is suffering the most. Redbull must be kicking themselves hard for pushing this one. Equally the FIA will be sat wondering why they thought it would slow Mercedes down when pretty much the rest of the world knew it would either change nothing or make them faster.
For the past couple of years, Mercedes has been working on reliability to run their aggressive modes for longer, which has helped them in the current scenario. This just proves that thier power to reliability ratio is higher, compared to other manufacturers. Renault probably is standing second now with Honda being third. Honda doesn't seem to have the same reliability as the other manufacturers. Ever since this new TD has kicked in, Renault seems to have closed the gap to Red Bull and Red Bull particularly is having more issues on their PU side. Strangely, Alpha Tauri is on the heels of RB too. With the new TD ensuring every customer runs the same exact modes and with same exact software, it makes me think if AT was even getting the same PU up until now! I may be wrong. May be RB is struggling with their car's balance, along with some PU issues specific to them which has made them struggle more than AT.
This proves that Horner is a dumb guy, who was also part of the lobby pushing FIA to get this TD out. Not sure how much they understood how the Honda PU was operating in quali and race modes Vs Mercedes. It was possible that, while Mercedes was using their most powerful mode in quali, they weren't using their possible high power mode in races, that lead Horner to believe that, the Honda is a match in Races and if they can cripple Mercedes' quali advantage, they can gain something out of it. It seems like Mercedes had more power in race modes that they weren't using and now, they are showing that. They did say that as much.
