Lewis Hamilton will start from the back of the grid in the Turkish Grand Prix after Mercedes decided to use a new Formula One engine.
The world champion team had been discussing whether it could pay to maintain Hamilton on his current power unit pool allocation until the end of the season.
Nevertheless, due to worries that Hamilton’s title hopes would be compromised if he retired, a decision has been made for him to fit a new internal combustion engine (ICE) for the race in Turkey this weekend.
While a complete power unit upgrade would have sent Hamilton to the rear of the grid, Mercedes’ choice to merely introduce a new ICE means he will have to accept a 10-place grid penalty for the use of a single new item.
Hamilton was down to two power units in his pool after the first one he used at the start of the season failed in practice for the Dutch Grand Prix.
After one of his power units was destroyed in his high-speed collision with Hamilton at the British Grand Prix, title rival Max Verstappen was left with only two power units.
However, in Sochi a fortnight ago, the Dutchman chose to adopt a new complete power unit. He finished second after recovering from his back of the grid start.
Mercedes decided that the risk of pushing things too far outweighed the chance of a one-off grid penalty because Verstappen was in a better position with his fresh engine.
Toto Wolff, the team’s CEO, recently stated that a single engine failure in a race would require 4 successive wins to recover from.
“We believe that between P1 and P2, with the fastest lap, that if you have one DNF it needs the other guy four races to catch up,” Wolff said.
“And that’s brutal. So you can afford to finish four times in second [place]. Therefore, you just need to really play it safe while not giving up performance.”
Hamilton had recently stated that he needed to take the necessary precautions with his older power units in order not to overstress them.
“I’m trying to treat my engines, the ones that we put in, with the absolute care when I’m driving, in terms of how much I’m gassing it, how much just revving the things, revving the nuts off it, really trying to minimise the laps that I do,” he explained.
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