After losing an engine during its shutdown at Zandvoort, Hamilton only has two engines left for the remaining six races of the 2021 season, one of which is a high-mileage unit.
Mercedes has admitted it has “question marks” over the remaining engines in its pool after being forced to re-equip Valtteri Bottas’ car for the second straight race at the Russian Grand Prix.
It is expected that Hamilton will have to follow suit in order to switch to a fourth engine and then trigger an automatic grid penalty.
In an interview with Sky Sports F1, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted that a strategic engine change at the Turkish Grand Prix this weekend was a “possibility” for Hamilton.
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“Most importantly, you don’t do DNF because of a reliability issue,” Wolff said.
“You can handle it if you get second or third, I think that’s fine. The championship will last a long time.
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“But if you are not finished [it is worse]. So let’s look at the parameters of the engines and make sure we don’t have any reliability issues.
“It is a possibility. When and how is not yet decided.”
Hamilton is two points ahead of championship rival Max Verstappen, who received an engine penalty in Sochi and recovered from the end of the grid and finished second behind Hamilton.
When asked if he was confident of avoiding another engine penalty this season, Verstappen replied: “We’ll be fine with this engine until the end.”
After the race in Sochi, Horner emphasized that Red Bull cannot afford to rely on Hamilton to be behind the scenes on one of the remaining laps.
“If you assume how many Mercedes engines are being replaced in sister cars and customer teams, you might expect a penalty,” he said.
“But of course we can’t rely on that.”
And Horner expects the title race to go as far as it will go and to continue to shuttle back and forth between Red Bull and Mercedes.
“I don’t think there is a track that stands out as much as Russia and Monza, but Mercedes will definitely be strong,” he said.
“They won in Turkey last year, they’ll be strong there, but then we start getting Austin, we should be there or something.
“Brazil, Mexico, we’ve always been strong, we don’t know anything about Qatar, we don’t know anything about Jeddah.
“Then you could say Abu Dhabi is 50:50 in what’s left on the table, which one team prefers a little more than the other.”
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