In my opinion, humble might it be when it comes to F1 racing, Mercedes will do everything in their power to gain the advantage even if they get penalized for it.
If it means shaving a tenth of a second off, which means a hell of alot in this sport, then so be it.
They more than certainly would rather take the chance in doing it and getting a suspension than rightly know their crews are capable of these modifications and doing nothing.
If the potential profit is higher than the risk of a penalty, then this is a perfectly reasonable strategy. Plus, as I wrote above, Formula 1 is no less corrupt sport than any other, so if Mercedes is involved in some murky schemes, they know what they are doing. By the way, judging by the fact that this information does not go beyond mere rumors, in this case everything is Ok.
For many years now, the main objective of sport isnt longer fun, but the money involved.
F1 is one of the sports that involves the most money, and it's to be expected that there is corruption in the middle of it, as in any other professional sport, unfortunately.
In F1 we've seen many cases where teams deliberately chose to break the rules, knowing that a punishment would have less of an impact than the benefit of getting a few more ranking positions.
And that's why penalties have evolved... today it's much harder for a team to lose 5 seconds in boxers than it's to pay a 1 million fine.
