Lewis Hamilton feeling victimised by Mercedes F1 engine reliability problems

Lewis Hamilton had some complaints to get off his chest as the Austrian Grand Prix weekend kicked off at the Red Bull Ring on Thursday.

Principle among them was the fact that he is having his fifth and final power unit bolted into his Mercedes chassis for this weekend's Grand Prix, which means that he will be in line for an engine penalty in the next couple of months. The rules for 2016 permit 5 units per driver as there are more than 20 Grands Prix. Normally the maximum is four for 20 races or fewer.

Grid penalties vary depending on how many of the six power unit components are being changed, but can add up to starting at the back of the grid. Certainly Mercedes will try to coincide the sixth engine with a performance upgrade, like the Phase 3 engine they used for just the works cars in the final races of 2015.

Hamilton will now have used five turbos and five MGU-H units, four batteries and Control electronics, but just 3 internal combustion engines and 3 MGU-K units.

Hamilton even suggested that he may need to 'go to the back' of the grid at two races as he believes that he will need two complete new power units before the end of the season. But Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff shot that down, saying that he was determined to make sure Hamilton only takes one complete PU penalty, likely to be at Spa or Monza, where it is easy to overtake and come through the field in a car as fast as the Mercedes.

"We planned to get through this season with only four engines anyway," said Wolff, adding that the situation around Hamilton's engine failures "pisses me off" and that the engine builders at Brixworth are working flat out to raise the reliability standard.

Hamilton had earlier complained that he was the only Mercedes engined driver who was being disadvantaged by reliability issues," We are putting in the last new engine this weekend and so at least one race I will start last and will need a sixth and even a seventh engine, I'm the only Mercedes driver to have that," he said. "And we are the Mercedes team. If there are 40 engines then you'd hope that we would have the best ones.

"Everyone else is on their normal plan and have four engines left. There's nothing I can do about it, it is what it is. I hope Mercedes learn from it and from the faults on mine."

On the face of it this is a classic example of that racer's mentality of creating narrative where he is facing adversity and having the back to the wall. It has worked historically for Hamilton and for plenty of others as a form of mental and motivational fillip ahead of a challenging weekend. In recent times this was a trait of Mark Webber's which often worked to draw a strong performance from him and the doyenne was Ayrton Senna, of course.

Hamilton needs a strong response after the last race. The three times champion had a poor Baku, not helped by struggles with (ironically) a power unit programme, which he was unable to get guidance on how to change, due to radio restrictions.

Again there it was the team's fault, in Hamilton's eyes, that the programme had been used on his car from the start of the race, while Rosberg started on a different programme, went into the faulty programme Hamilton was using and then managed to get out of it. The world champion icily rejected any suggestions that he needed to study the manual more closely, putting the problem squarely on the team.

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