Mercedes tease significant upgrade as Lewis Hamilton’s pit lane start explained

Mercedes have explained the reasons behind Lewis Hamilton’s pit lane start at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, teasing a significant F1 upgrade package.

Despite qualifying seventh in Baku, Mercedes opted to start Hamilton from the pit lane.

Mercedes decided to give Hamilton a new power unit in his pool of components for the rest of the year.

However, due to an engine failure in Australia, Mercedes knew this decision would be inevitable.

With Singapore difficult to overtake, and sprint weekends coming up, Mercedes decided to sacrifice Hamilton’s weekend despite a respectable P7 starting position.

Another key factor, revealed by trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin, is that Mercedes are preparing a significant upgrade in the coming races.

Speaking about the decision to start from the pit lane with Hamilton in Baku, Shovlin said on the Mercedes YouTube channel: “The situation with Lewis really started back in Melbourne when we lost a very young power unit with a failure.

“So we had been aware for a long time we were going to have to get another power unit into the pool in order to be able to complete the season without risk of one failing during a race. You definitely don't want that to happen.

“The question was - where do we do it? You wouldn’t do it normally have taken a pit lane start from a P7 grid position because there would be decent opportunity to score points. But one of the factors for us is that we’ve drifted back in terms of our performance recently. In the near future, we’ve got a good update kit coming.

“We’re hoping that will put us back into a better situation. What we wanted to do was to get the pain of that pit lane start out of the way before we’ve got a car that can hopefully challenge for podiums on merit.

“So that was the real thinking. Now that’s behind us so we’re looking forward to the rest of the season. Certainly in Lewis’ case he should have good, reliable and powerful Mercedes engines for the remaining races.”

In recent rounds Mercedes have slipped back in the pecking order amid Ferrari’s resurgence.

George Russell inherited third in Azerbaijan following an incident between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz.