Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Interlagos, 2021

Hamilton’s latest engine change due to high degradation – Mercedes

2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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Mercedes has replaced Lewis Hamilton’s engine due to higher than expected degradation in its performance.

Team principal Toto Wolff told Sky the Interlagos race presents a good opportunity to make the change as Hamilton will not have to take his five-place grid penalty in tomorrow’s sprint qualifying race.

“We have deg on the engine that until the end of the season is just going to continue to decrease in power,” he explained. “And we haven’t yet realised why that is but we’re just seeing it creep down.”

Both Mercedes drivers have exceed the maximum allocation of three internal combustion engines. Valtteri Bottas is already on his sixth while Hamilton has taken his fifth today.

Wolff said this was due to degradation the team had not witnessed in previous years of using the V6 turbo hybrids. Hamilton’s engine had to be changed in order to ensure he would be competitive over the final races.

“Every engine is degrading, we have seen that over the past years, that over a thousand kilometres there is a certain amount of kilowatts that the engine is degrading,” he explained.

“Ours is just degrading much more than the average of the past few years. And that increases from weekend to weekend. So if we keep the engine, we are going to be, for sure, not competitive in Saudi and Abu Dhabi.”

Wolff confirmed that Hamilton now has this new engine and his fourth internal combustion engine, which was fitted at the Turkish Grand Prix, in the pool for the remaining races, all three prior engines having been ruled out of further race use. “I think this is the final one that we need to take,” he said.

The opportunity of the sprint race to improve Sunday’s starting position, he said, was what had pushed Mercedes to take the penalty in Sao Paulo. “There’s this opportunity. Obviously, Saudi looks like a good opportunity too, but we think by then that the motor is going to lose more power. So in terms of our simulations, that’s the right place to do it.”

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2021 Sao Paulo Grand Prix

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Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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11 comments on “Hamilton’s latest engine change due to high degradation – Mercedes”

  1. I think Mercedes’ strategy might be to go all out for the last 3 race weekends and hope that they can bag 1-2 finishes with their newer engines. If Mercedes can get a 1-2 in Qatar for example, that puts the pressure on Red Bull once more who will have the dilemma of whether to turn up the engines and risk failure or take a penalty.

    Bottas will need to be on his game for this strategy to work though, as Max finishing 2nd is fine for him.

  2. I’m a little confused here. “The opportunity of the sprint race to improve Sunday’s starting position” statement has me a bit confused. They don’t take the 5 place grid penalty until “after” the sprint race which sets the race order. So how are they getting an opportunity to “improve” Sunday’s starting position? In all likely hood, Hamilton will be in the top 3 (2nd or 3rd).

    1. Yeah the last paragraph of this article isnt right. I think the point here is that Hamilton could got on pole and win the sprint qualifying, then start 6th on a track where overtaking is relatively easy without too much dirty air. The downside here is gaps in qualifying can be very small leading to a more mixed up grid.

      1. I think the idea is him getting at least those three points Michael and @flyingferrarim, and then trust new ICE and their strong straightline pace to get him to the podium. Well.

        1. @bosyber
          That makes sense but still. They said a better opportunity for a starting position and not about a points haul. Idk. I think the meaning maybe closer to what Michael said. I still find the statement mystifying in that positional improvement from qually to sprint results may not change or in fact hurt them. Perez isn’t a good one lap qualifier but is much better in race pace. That in turn could hurt Lewis in the sprint as Lewis is usually a strong qualifier as is Bottas. Idk, time will tell.

  3. So by the last race, his engine will be at the breaking point. Because it seems the Mercedes engine it is not going to last the 4 races including all the practices and qualifying. This has more to do with red Bull making Mercedes run their engines at the maximum.

  4. Curious that they traced this to the ice and not the turbo or electronic systems or a cooling performance issue. It’s a v6 at max 10500 rpm—-it seems it should be the most robust part of the PU.

    1. No way Wolff is telling the truth here

  5. The Honda pressure is eating merc engines for breakfast.

  6. Is it because Mercedes are having to push the engine too hard just to keep up with RB?

  7. Sounds like tolerances and timings are being pushed to the limit, supposedly you cannot change engine modes on the fly therefore you have to say that the pu is deteoriating, obviously everyone knows current engine are mapped to perfection and are self managed.

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