Mercedes says Lewis Hamilton’s stoppage in Friday’s second practice session at the Dutch Grand Prix was because of “abnormal oil system behaviour” in his Formula 1 car.
Hamilton only completed three laps in FP2 on modern F1’s first trip to Zandvoort before stopping on track.
The seven-time world champion had topped the first practice session when running was limited because of a lengthy delay caused by a stoppage for another Mercedes-powered car, Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin.
It left Hamilton with just 20 laps to his name on Friday compared to 51 for team-mate Valtteri Bottas and 46 for title rival Max Verstappen, and Hamilton admitted afterwards: “The main issue for me is just catching up.
“But Valtteri does a fantastic job and we’re not too far off on set-up most of the time so hopefully the great work he’s done today helps.”
All Mercedes has disclosed is that abnormal oil system behaviour caused Hamilton to stop.
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) September 3, 2021
Hamilton had an older Mercedes power unit in his car on Friday that was high on mileage.
He is due to switch to a fresher one for the rest of the weekend so there are no ramifications for this issue in terms of grid penalties.
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “We’ve had a tricky day with red flags costing us a lot of running time in the first session and then Lewis had an issue with his car, so we had to stop on track.
“Everyone has struggled with a lack of running so there isn’t masses of data to work with and many had low fuel runs that were compromised with traffic, so we have to expect many teams to move forward tomorrow.
“We’re struggling a bit with Turn 2-3, we seem to be losing there on both low and high fuel but we’ve got a bit of time tonight to understand that. There are a few other places we can improve the balance but overall, it doesn’t seem too far off.
“We have to recover a bit of running with Lewis but there is time to do that in the morning session.”
