Hamilton “on the back foot” after engine problem limits him to 20 laps

2021 Dutch Grand Prix

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Lewis Hamilton admits he is going into the Dutch Grand Prix weekend at a disadvantage after a power unit problem in second practice limited him to a total of 20 laps on Friday.

The world championship leader was unable to perform his qualifying simulation or race fuel run in the afternoon session. A lengthy red flag during the first practice session also cut the amount of running drivers could do.

“This morning I only really got 20 minutes of running, obviously, with the red flag,” said Hamilton. “Naturally that puts us on the back foot but Valtteri [Bottas] looks like he had a good session so hopefully tomorrow we can make up for some of the time.”

“I made some changes into the session but I got one lap with it so it’s very hard to [see] good or bad points from that change,” he added. “But we’ve got Valtteri who did a lot of running, lots of data analysis we have from all the long runs [and] most other people did their long runs.”

Mercedes confirmed Hamilton was running his highest-mileage power unit, which is his original one from the beginning of the season. The fault was traced back to unusual behaviour in its oil system.

Much of today’s running at Zandvoort was disrupted by red flags due to various incidents. However Hamilton said he is more concerned with getting up to speed than problems during tomorrow’s qualifying session.

“[Getting] a clean lap I don’t think will necessarily be the main issue, for me it’s just catching up. But [Bottas] does a fantastic job and we’re not too far with set-up most of the time so hopefully the great work he’s done today will help.”

Along with several of his rivals Hamilton praised the revamped Zandvoort but said he expects overtaking will be very difficult in Sunday’s race.

“I knew it was great when I was in Formula 3 but it’s crazy in a Formula 1 car. I mean, the speed we’re going through turn seven, it’s a real racing circuit.

“It will be interesting to see – I don’t think you’ll be able overtake here because it’s just high, high downforce, super-fast corners, which we probably won’t be able to follow through. But let’s hope that there’s a good strategy for Sunday.”

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2021 Dutch Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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9 comments on “Hamilton “on the back foot” after engine problem limits him to 20 laps”

  1. This has been updated since publication with an extra paragraph adding more from Mercedes on Hamilton’s power unit.

  2. Since the start of the season :O

  3. Lot of praise for Bottas

  4. They’ll be fine as Bottas will collect the necessarily data. Bit of a Monaco feel about the circuit. Pole position critical here. Interested to see what de Ferrari’s will mount up to in FP3

    1. petebaldwin (@)
      3rd September 2021, 17:03

      Pole position is important but I can’t see a way that they’re going to get through the whole race without a safety car coming out. It’s almost worth taking a sub-optimal strategy to protect yourself because I’d say there’s a lot more than a 50% chance of seeing the safety car during the race. It’ll be really interesting to see how the teams play it.

      1. True, this matters strategy wise, there’s tracks like singapore or baku where almost every race there’s a SC.

      2. This track was natorius for incidents, lets hope its improved some since ’85

      3. @petebaldwin Indeed, but it would be brave man to just think about tyre and fuel saving, especially the one behind.

  5. Surely the authorities, now experiencing such frequent red flag stoppages, should be giving consideration to reverting to the 90-minutes, or even to 120 minutes, practice session times. Judging by the commentary on the Sky Website last night (Australian time), there was not a great amount for spectators to see.

    A bit sad for Formula One.

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