Reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton said he was worried throughout the duration of the Canadian Grand Prix that his engine would fail, as he relinquished the points lead to Sebastian Vettel.
Mercedes initially intended to introduce its PU2 for all six of its cars but a quality issue forced the manufacturer to postpone its update until the French Grand Prix.
It meant Hamilton, along with Valtteri Bottas and the Force India/Williams drivers, remained with their original spec engines.
Hamilton had used his engine across the past six events and radioed his team during the early stages of Sunday’s race to report power drops.
Hamilton ultimately came home in fifth position, having lost out through the pit stop phase to Daniel Ricciardo, but expressed relief at reaching the chequered flag.
“I’m super grateful that I finished,” said Hamilton. “I’m just so happy that I finished.
“From the start, all of a sudden I was down on power and my engine was saying it was over-temperature and I couldn’t get the temperatures down.
“I just thought it was going to fail and every single lap I was just on the edge waiting for that power to drop away.
“It kept dropping and coming back and dropping and I was like ‘jeez’. It was the seventh race on the engine so it’s seen its life. I could have lost a lot more today.”
Hamilton also hit out at Formula 1’s restrictive engine regulations, believing the limit on components is hurting the spectacle.
“I hope they don’t go to two engines next year because it’s just going to get ridiculous,” he said.
“It was definitely a bit more fun when you had more engines I would say.
“The fact that a season could sway through reliability, I don’t think anyone wants to say that. I don’t think anyone wants to be cheated of that. You want actual true performance.
“The sport is going in the wrong direction in my opinion. I have so many different opinions about it.
“They need to change this fricking engines, they say they want to save costs and then they spend more to produce it.”
