Mercedes being 'uber-cautious' with Hamilton change

Lewis Hamilton's fuel system change is a sign of Mercedes being "uber-cautious" in order to ensure reliability, according to Toto Wolff.

Mercedes broke the curfew at Circuit of the Americas on Friday night as it changed Hamilton's fuel system ahead of Saturday's running. The change did not appear to have an impact on the defending champion, who duly took pole position in qualifying.

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Team boss Wolff says the change is a reflection of Mercedes' approach following numerous reliability problems this year for Hamilton.

“We just saw some data we were not sure of, whether it was all right," Wolff said. "Our main aim is to give them a reliable car so they can fight it out on track, and we being maybe uber-cautious at the moment.

“Generally this season we have more mechanical reliability situations which we need to get on top of, and we are trying to contain that at the moment.”

And Wolff admits Mercedes was having to be careful with the parts it did change in order to make sure Hamilton would not receive a grid penalty.

“Yeah, of course, there are certain parts if you change them you get a penalty, and we are just trying to have the best decision in order to avoid a penalty, but contain the problem."

Asked if there is a chance Hamilton may have to take a penalty at a future race this season as a result of this year's unreliability, Wolff replied: “I can’t tell you.”

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.