Canada was a spanner in the works in Mercedes’ otherwise flawless 2014 campaign.
Until both Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton struck technical trouble aboard their silver W05s in Montreal, they had shared a total clean-sweep of one-two victories this year.
“You quickly get used to winning,” team boss Toto Wolff told Spanish reporters at the team’s Brackley headquarters this week.
“I never thought, unless there was a collision, that we could not finish a race even with one driver. But in Montreal it was about to happen,” he is quoted by EFE news agency.
“It was a good wake-up call.”
Germany’s Bild newspaper reports that the issue can basically be traced to the energy recovery systems, which overheated.
Wolff said: “In Montreal, we were trying a new cooling system for the first time. The new software went crazy.”
Team chairman Niki Lauda added: “It is a wake-up call. We need to check every detail on the car.”
Wolff continued: “We have started new processes of quality control to make the car more reliable.”