godlameroso wrote:Basically confirming they have a pre-chamber, and in part they used the reliability loophole along with the two tokens. The exhaust cost no tokens. I think the block is lighter in the sense that it's got less material due to a pre-chamber design.
They expect to be closer to Ferrari than they have been all season, and hope for a top 5 finish or higher should something happen up front.
New fuel from Mobil1 is being introduced for the rest of the season. It's been part of a long term plan to be "best of the rest" behind the big 3 teams, then in Suzuka do the final update to try to close the gap to Ferrari as much as possible.
In Sepang Alonso had the 6th fastest lap however he was still almost a second off Red Bull, .7 seconds off Ferrari, and 1.4 seconds off Mercedes Pace.
Your translation is pretty accurate, but the bolded part is not. They don´t say the upgrade is considered as reliability, they say Alonso only talked about reliability, specifically saying power has not increased, but the journalist explain that cannot be 100% true as reliability upgrades would not spend any token, and they spent 2 so there must be something more
The most interesting part of the article, apart from stating the upgrade will use pre-chamber ignition, is they say the new spec Mobil1 fuel for pre-chamber ignition will be ready for Suzuka. That means it was not for Malaysia, so that may be the reason they only tested the new PU in FP1 in Malaysia, but they didn´t use in for the race, something none of us did understand.