Hamilton: Merc engine delay will be ‘magnified’ in Canada 

Lewis Hamilton fears Mercedes could lose out on vital performance at this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, after its plans to introduce an upgraded Formula 1 engine were scuppered. 

Mercedes had been set to debut its second-spec power unit of the 2018 season in Montreal, but its introduction has been put on hold until the French Grand Prix later this month after the reigning world champions discovered a last-minute “quality issue”.

It means drivers Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas will be forced to stick with Mercedes’ PU1 engine that has already contested the opening six rounds of the campaign. While Mercedes has enjoyed strong reliability so far this year, the news comes as a blow with rivals Ferrari expected to introduce an power unit update at a circuit dominated by long straights. 

“This is a power circuit so it was our target,” Hamilton explained. “The guys worked as hard as they could. We’ve had to take the sensible decision to not bring it here, which is definitely unfortunate. 

“We’ll try and make do without. But it will mean our performance is not the best. The goal was to make engines to stay the same all the way through. But naturally, you lose horsepower over races. If we’re in 7000-8000km, it definitely would have lost performance. So at a power circuit, it will probably be magnified.”

"If the others are bringing upgrades and are using fresh engines, particularly with how close we are we won’t be in a position to fight I don’t believe. Naturally I am still here to win but as I said if they’ve got upgrades on their engines which can be a tenth to two tenths."

Mercedes is looking to bounce back from a difficult Monaco Grand Prix weekend in which Hamilton saw his championship lead reduced to 14 points after he finished behind chief title rival Sebastian Vettel.

When asked if he anticipated Ferrari would be strong in Montreal, the Briton replied: “Yeah, and also particularly if they do bring their upgrade. It might be difficult. Ferrari are particularly very strong on the straights, it will be interesting to see whether we’re able to match them or not. But we’re going to give it everything we’ve got, that’s for sure.”

While Bottas admits the delay to Mercedes’ new power unit will act as a “small penalty” for the team in Canada, he feels it could actually put the German manufacturer in a stronger position later on in the season. 

“We were initially expecting to bring the new Power Unit for this race, which would have been a small gain compared to the old one,” Bottas said. “We found some issues and to be safe and make it perfect we’ll keep working on it to use it in two weeks.

“For sure the new one would have been a little bit better, but it’s not like our old engine, Phase One, is a bad engine, it’s a good one and it’s still running perfectly and running reliably.

“We were planning to use it again later this season, in Budapest, but now, instead of that, we’ll use the new one in Budapest. I think it will be a small penalty here but it will put us in a nicer position later.”