Mercedes were "worried because they are doing too well", recounts team's former technical director

Mercedes has dominated the turbo-hybrid era with eight consecutive constructors' championships and seven drivers' titles for Lewis Hamilton. The Silver Arrows' former technical director Paddy Lowe, however, recently revealed that, at the dawn of this new era, the team was too thrilled about the visible edge their power unit had over the rest out of fear of "doing too well".

According to Lowe, this fear stemmed from the fact that a single team performing drastically better than the rest would reflect very poorly on nine out of the ten constructors. Furthermore, it could possibly cause harm to the reputation of the sport as a whole.

As reported by Motorsport, Lowe commented on where the team stood back in 2014, saying:

“Imagine you have Toto [Wolff] and the Daimler board of directors who are worried because they are doing too well. There were also material reasons for that because the politics of the time where Bernie [Ecclestone] would go around saying it was all a nightmare, those engines were awful.”

Further explaining why this was not the best news for the team, Lowe added, saying:

“The thought was if Mercedes looked ridiculously good then you would do something about it. There was a lot of tension around the strangest of issues, namely how good you were allowed to look.”

With drastic changes in technical and financial regulations coming into the 2022 season, F1 is on the brink of a new era. Whether this is the end of Mercedes' dominance or whether Lewis Hamilton will be back to take on a record-breaking eighth championship, we will find out soon enough.

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Mercedes team boss denies Paddy Lowe's claims

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff denies ever turning down their level of performance or competitiveness in the past. The Austrian's claims come as opposed to Paddy Lowe, who claimed that the team turned down their engines during qualifying sessions in 2014.

Wolff contradicted the claims made by Lowe when asked to comment on the same:

“I think Paddy must have been in a different situation than me. There is no situation in which you turn down an engine just so that the regulations come into play own direction is changed.”

He further said:

“We were very competitive in 2014 and I think everyone could see that. It was the start of a regulatory environment that wouldn’t have changed anyway. So yeah, maybe that’s the impression Paddy had.”

Lowe left Mercedes in 2017 and replaced Pat Symonds as Chief Technical Officer at Williams. He, however, left the Grove-based team for good at the start of the 2019 season.