Mercedes has put precautions in place at the Japanese Grand Prix to protect against repeat power unit failures following Lewis Hamilton's retirement in Malaysia.
Hamilton retired from the lead with 16 laps remaining at Sepang, dropping him 23 points behind team-mate Nico Rosberg in the championship standings. Mercedes has now found which part failed on Hamilton's car but has had to take precautions - including the delay of customer engines - as it doesn't fully understand the cause yet.
"Our analysis has shown that Lewis’ engine suffered a big-end bearing failure," a team spokesman said. "This happened without warning after 618km and was preceded by a loss of oil pressure in Turn 15. For this race weekend, Lewis will revert to his Singapore unit and Nico will use his Malaysia engine.
"We will introduce revised running parameters for all Mercedes engines this weekend. To include but not limited to a different, more conservative oil specification.
"Planned new engines for five customer drivers this weekend will be delayed to contain further possible learning from the strip of the failed unit. They will continue to use their units from Malaysia."
Hamilton will run the same power unit he raced in Singapore, Italy and Belgium this weekend, taking in its fourth race. The triple world champion then has one brand new power unit available to him for the final four races of the season. Rosberg similarly will have one fresh power unit to use between now and the end of the season.
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