Lewis Hamilton grid penalty: Why 7 times Mercedes F1 champion will not start from the last?

Lewis Hamilton grid penalty: Reigning champion Lewis Hamilton will only serve a 10-place grid penalty after making strategic engine changes.

There were murmurs earlier this week about Lewis Hamilton taking his fourth engine of the year ahead of the Turkish Grand Prix that would have fixated his start of the race at the end of the grid.

However, the latest update by Mercedes in Hamilton’s power unit has only sanctioned him a 10-place grid penalty, which left the fans confused, as they were expecting a similar sentence as Max Verstappen received in Russia or Valtteri Bottas in Italy.

BREAKING: Lewis Hamilton is set to receive a 10-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race

His car has a new internal combustion engine, exceeding his allocation#TurkishGP 🇹🇷 #F1 pic.twitter.com/TUy4idPRdx

— Formula 1 (@F1) October 8, 2021

But there is a difference between Hamilton’s penalty and ones served by his counterparts; over here, Hamilton is not taking a whole new power unit. Instead, his team is only making strategic changes to a new internal combustion engine (ICE) for this weekend’s event in Turkey.

This change was brought in as there is a potential risk of Hamilton retiring his car in Turkey if Mercedes kept relying on the current pool of the engine.

While a brand new power unit would have sent back Hamilton at the back of the grid, a fresh ICE means he will take the 10-place grid dip to use a single new item.

So a new power unit on cards for Lewis Hamilton?

Well, it doesn’t seem Hamilton can rely on his current pool of power units until the end of the season, even after installing a new ICE in his engine being used in Turkey.

But Mercedes is probably hesitating to go with a fresh new power unit because of the latest reliability issues reported to them after the Italian Grand Prix, and Bottas had to make a recent engine change in the following race.

Thus, Mercedes doesn’t want to risk the championship by making Hamilton the victim of the same fate. Therefore, it only remains to be seen how Mercedes will strategize from here.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

Read More