Mercedes had to swap ICE Hamilton: 'Retirement a killer for championship'

Lewis Hamilton will receive a ten-place grid penalty for the Turkish Grand Prix due to changing his internal combustion engine (ICE). The Briton will do his best to limit the damage during qualifying. Toto Wolff explains why Mercedes decided to make the change.

"We had to do it. We saw some data on the ICE that didn't look promising and a retirement is a total killer for the championship", Wolff begins in an interview with Sky Sports. A DNF would be a big loss in the championship and give Max Verstappen a big lead.

"We understand much better now, it's something that can happen from time to time. The root cause is understood, but we are still analysing how we can prevent it in the future. It can last until the end of the season, but there could be a moment where you say is it worth taking a fresh one, so it's work in progress."

In long runs Mercedes can't overtake

"I think there is never a track that is perfect, overtaking is generally difficult. We thought that this one was generally a good one but yesterday in the long runs we couldn't overtake at all," Wolff says. In the best-case scenario, Hamilton will start from P11. Wolff says it would help if Valtteri Bottas could qualify on the front row of the grid.