Mercedes confident Hamilton's engine in 'good shape'

Mercedes remains confident Lewis Hamilton's Formula 1 engine remains in "good shape" despite his decision to ease off in the closing stages of last weekend's Australian Grand Prix to help preserve his power unit.

Hamilton conceded defeat to Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel with a handful of laps remaining in Melbourne for fear of damaging his engine after running in the hot air coming off the back of the German's car.

"The engine was overheating," Hamilton explained. "I’ve got to do seven races with this engine, preferably more if I can. So I was on the limit.

"I was too hot but I was pushing, I was like ‘I’ve got to keep going’. I was nervous of damaging the engine at the same time."

Despite Hamilton's concerns, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said that while the team is confident Hamilton's engine was not seriously harmed running close to Vettel, it will not know for sure until the next on-track session in Bahrain next Friday.

"You may have heard us on the radio telling Lewis his engine was getting hot. That is just the fact that when the cars get so close, you don't get clean air going into the radiators to keep it cool," Shovlin said.

"It did get quite close to limit temperate, but we are monitoring these limits very closely. You can run up to the limits, you just have to be careful you don't run over them.

"In Lewis' case we were OK and just up around the limit. You heard Lewis say on the radio he couldn't get past and he was going to save the engine. At that point, he just backed off, was cooling the car and could turn down the power of the engine so it was not having to work so hard.

"But, we are pretty confident the engine will be in good shape. We are limited in what tests we can do because we can't actually run the engine, we are not allowed to until we get to Bahrain.

"In terms of where it will be used next, at the moment that's Lewis' only engine in the engine pool, so he is going to be running that engine in Bahrain and China. We will be monitoring them as we always do to ensure everything continues to be OK."