Lewis Hamilton reveals component on Mercedes F1 car “wasn’t correctly built”

Lewis Hamilton revealed that he was forced to take a power unit change for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as a “component wasn’t correctly built”.

The seven-time world champion had qualified in seventh, but was forced to start from the pit lane following the overnight power unit change after qualifying.

Unfortunately, Mercedes only discovered the problem on Saturday evening, when parc fermé conditions were in effect.

It resulted in a very difficult race at the Baku City Circuit for the 39-year-old, who managed to recover two points in ninth place.

“We had a great car on Friday and made the tiniest of changes into Saturday,” Hamilton told media including Sportlite era

“One of the [power unit] components wasn’t correctly built, and then that led us the wrong way on Saturday. We didn’t find out [about the issue] until the end of the day.

“Being this race, was the strongest place, best place, they said at least to make the change for the engine, because we need one as I lost one earlier [in the season]. So we knew it was going to be a tough day.”

Hamilton expected difficulties
Starting from the pit lane, the 105-time race winner fully expected a difficult afternoon in Baku.

Hamilton initially made advancements in the race, but eventually got stuck behind Haas’ newcomer Oliver Bearman for a significant part of his second stint.

Bearman was eventually surpassed by Hamilton, who was initially expected to end the race without scoring any points, but ended up benefitting from a crash involving Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez on the second-to-last lap. Hamilton acknowledged that it would not be possible to overtake on that day, as the track was not conducive to it.

“It’s challenging to keep up in the middle, but we should aim to be near the end of the lap. I’m not sure why our performance is lacking on our end, but it happens.”