Lewis Hamilton: Mercedes reveal F1 star risked not starting Canadian GP

Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes reveal Hamilton risked not starting Canadian GP

There was frantic work in the garage.

Matthew Scott

Wednesday 12 June 2019 10:39

Mercedes have revealed that Lewis Hamilton remained at risk of failing to start the Canadian Grand Prix after finding a hydraulic leak after qualifying, which required fixing on race morning. Had any additional issues sprung up, The Silver Arrows say Hamilton may well not have taken part.

Hamilton inherited victory in Montreal after battling Sebastian Vettel, who crossed the line first but was hit with a five-second penalty for an unsafe manoeuvre in front of the reigning champion.

It was the Brit's seventh Canadian GP record, equalling Michael Schumacher's record in the event and also making it his most successful race in his career.

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However, he came close to not taking part at all, as revealed by trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

"The issue is that the cars are in parc ferme overnight," Shovlin said on Mercedes' debrief video. "we're not allowed to touch them or to investigate it further.

"So that investigation moved to Sunday morning when we're allowed to access the cars again and mechanics can work on them.

"We had to take the power unit out. We traced the leak to the throttle actuator and then we made a request to the FIA to change the throttle actuator and some of the associated hydraulics.

"That work was quite a big job. There's a lot to do in that and it was pretty tight to get Lewis' car back together for the start of the race.

"We're fairly happy we can do the work in that time; the issue when you have an unknown fault or a leak is that you don't know how long it's going to take to find it and investigate it, [but] we were able to get the car back together.

"Where we were at risk was if we fired up and found another problem. If the engine had to come out again, that's where we would've got short on time and perhaps not even been able to start the race.

"But it was a great job by all the mechanics involved and quite happily the car was back together in time and finished the race successfully."