Force India missed out on Mercedes engine upgrade

It has emerged that Force India had to do without Mercedes' latest power unit upgrade introduced for Canada.

Without having to trade in any of its in-season performance 'tokens', the German marque brought an upgraded power unit to Montreal.

The rumour in the paddock is that while not actually more powerful, the reliability fixes mean the engine could now be 'turned up' to a higher performance mode.

"We can turn it up or turn it down whenever we need to," Lewis Hamilton revealed.

It is believed the new units were fitted to the Mercedes, Williams and Lotus cars in Canada. But not the Force India. Auto Motor und Sport claims that Sergio Perez has not had a single engine change so far in 2015, meaning his 'engine 1' now has almost 4800 kilometres on the odometer after Canada.

"We had some problems with the fuel system and could not build eight engines in time," said Mercedes boss Toto Wolff. "Force India was selected for stage 2 because their engines looked the best in terms of damage."

Wolff said Force India will get the Montreal upgrade in Austria.