In the first year of the hybrid era, Mercedes was so superior that they worried internally about looking too dominant – Paddy Lowe reports curious discussions
After the first 2022 Formula 1 tests last week in Barcelona, no one in the paddock believes the teams have played with their cards on the table so far. Who is ahead and by how much, and who has the most power, is impossible to say definitively. In 2014, the first year of the hybrid era, it was different.
During that time, Mercedes clearly dominated with its power unit. Paddy Lowe, former technical director of the world champion team, recalls, “I think by the time we got to the first test, certainly the second test, it became clearer that 1. some others were pretty desperate and 2. we were in pretty good shape.”
“Then we came to the Bahrain test with another upgrade that suddenly added another seven or eight tenths of pure power. That was a tremendous day. At that point we knew we were in a very special place,” Lowe tells Formula One podcast ‘Beyond the Grid’.
Mercedes bosses didn’t want to “look too good “
It was exciting to ride that wave of dominance, “but you also had other worries,” the 59-year-old admits. “Imagine you have Toto (Wolff; ed.) and the board of Daimler worrying about being in too good a position.”
“There were also material reasons for it, because the politics of the time when Bernie (Ecclestone) was running around saying it was all a nightmare, these engines were terrible. The thought was if Mercedes looked ridiculously good then they would do something about it,” the former Mercedes man explained.
Fearing possible rule changes that could penalise the team, there was consequently “a lot of tension around the strangest of issues”, Lowes recalls, “namely how good you were allowed to look”. As a result, he says, Mercedes handled the engine modes with appropriate care.
Engine was not turned up full even for Q3
“In qualifying we never revved the engine for Q1 or Q2,” he says, while emphasising: “It was a good car, by the way, it wasn’t just the engine. We also had excellent aerodynamics, better than everyone else.”
“The discussion then was about how far to rev the engine for Q3. Toto was whispering in my ear, ‘This is too much, this is too much, we’ll wait and see’, and I was just thinking, ‘Yeah, but if we’re not on pole, we’re going to look like a bunch of fools!’ That was a big part of the discussion on Saturday afternoon. “
For quite a long time that went on, “for most of 2014,” says Lowe, “because the engine was never at full power in qualifying.” Nevertheless, Mercedes secured pole position in 18 out of 19 qualifying sessions during the season in question.
Wolff contradicts “this impression” of Lowe
When asked about the tale of the downed engines, Mercedes team boss Wolff incidentally rebuffs: “I think Paddy must have been in a different situation to me. There is no situation where you turn down an engine just to get the regulations changed in your direction.”
“We were very competitive in 2014 and I think everyone could see that,” the 50-year-old holds. “It was the start of a regulatory environment that wouldn’t have been changed anyway. So yeah, maybe Paddy had that impression. “
