F1 News

Leak almost caused Hamilton to miss Canadian Grand Prix

Leak almost caused Hamilton to miss Canadian Grand Prix

12-06-2019 10:27
1

Another race, another win for Mercedes, but they've revealed it could have been very different had Lewis Hamilton's car required more work prior to the Canadian Grand Prix.

Mercedes faced a race against time as they tried to fix a hydraulic leak on the five-time World Champion's car. The car was in pieces as they tried to fix it in time for the start of the race on Sunday evening. 

The car was eventually put back together and against all the odds and with a bit of luck, Hamilton won the race beating Sebastian Vettel thanks to a penalty for the German. The penalty will be debated for a long time but the fact Mercedes were able to reassemble the car and get the result was very impressive in itself.

In the Mercedes debrief Andrew Shovlin revealed fixing the car was much closer than people might realise.

"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," Shovlin said.

"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."

Follow GPblog now on TwitterYouTube, and Facebook!