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 RacingNews365.
“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 made some progress early on in the race, although was stuck behind Haas’ rookie driver Oliver Bearman for a large portion of his second stint.
Bearman was eventually overtaken by Hamilton, who was actually set to finish outside of the points until Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez crashed on the penultimate lap.
“I knew that we wouldn’t be able to overtake today,” added Hamilton. “This is not one of those tracks.
“It’s difficult to follow in the middle, at least be close towards the end [of the lap]. And yeah, I don’t know why our pace so bad on our side, but it happens.”
