Mercedes want to cut one customer team

Toto Wolff, has said Mercedes could drop one of their customer engine teams in the future due to the low profit margins.

Mercedes currently supply to Aston Martin, McLaren and Williams with power units, which makes their engines the most used among the grid ahead of Ferrari whose power units are deployed by three teams.

The budget cap in Formula 1 has begun to take hold of the teams and cost cutting measures have been taken or are starting to come into play as the affects are being felt.

As a result of this, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff would prefer to keep their production costs down and letting a customer team go. But Wolff has not gave any indication on who he could be letting go…

Unfortunately, the business of leasing engines is not compelling and interesting because the FIA have put in a certain limit you can charge to your customers in order to protect the smaller teams. I’d rather have six [customer cars], push the development further down the line and then make two engines fewer, because you need to produce two fewer plus two spares for every team. In an ideal world, I would maybe see us plus two [customers], so actually downsize a bit.

Toto Wolff talking to Financial Times.