Williams F1 deputy chief Claire Williams says the team has not complained to the FIA on the F1 customer engine parity.
In January, Charlie Whiting issued a technical directive asking manufacturers to treat all their customers as equals. When asked about the incident, Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested we “should ask Claire Williams”, why the directive was issued.
On Friday, Mercedes F1 boss Toto Wolff said the directive has no effect on Mercedes as the outfit provides identical hardware, software and operating conditions to all customers and its works team. He also asked the media to confirm his facts with Williams F1 and Force India.
Claire Williams confirmed Wolff’s stand.
“Contrary to comments made recently in the press, we refute any suggestion that we have questioned the parity of the power units provided by Mercedes-AMG HPP,” Williams said in a statement.
“We are absolutely confident that the power units used by Mercedes, Force India and ourselves are identical in terms of both hardware and software.
“We have an excellent professional and personal relationship with Mercedes, and our focus is firmly on continuing the good work that we have started, as we prepare for the final test in Barcelona this week ahead of the new season.”
The team’s tech chief Paddy Lowe says the issue of parity may affect the customers of other engine makers, but not the Mercedes powered teams.
“If you analyse it, it’s probably bad for us, because I’m not aware of any difference that memo will make to Mercedes,” he told GrandPX.
“It might affect other engine manufacturers, in which case it will bump up some of our potential rivals, like McLaren or Red Bull, for the sake of argument.
“On that basis, it certainly would not be in our interest to have promoted it.”
Mercedes wants its customers to run on the same specs and operating conditions as it can learn more from running six cars than just two, Lowe added.
“Mercedes values the contribution of their customer teams in the generation of engine performance and reliability data. So they want us to run at the same levels.”
