LEWIS HAMILTON’s Mercedes team are keeping their fingers crossed he doesn’t have a prang in his F1 car – because they are desperately short of spare parts.
The F1 season is due to kick off in Austria on July 5 followed by another race in Austria the following weekend and then the Hungarian GP the week after.
Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes team could run out of spare car parts before the F1 return in Austria on July 5Credit: Reuters
There are two races at Silverstone and then the Spanish GP making it a total of six races in seven weeks.
And with Hamilton’s Merc factory being shut for 63 days due to the coronavirus, they are behind schedule in making spare parts.
“If you have two races, you’ll go to a race and have some spare parts,” said Mercedes’ chief operating officer, Rob Thomas.
“If you have an issue in the first race you can normally manage the second race because you’ve got your spares.
“Add a third race to that, and all of a sudden you’ve run out of spares for the third race.
“This presents a real headache for the factory in how we make sure the guys at the circuit have enough parts.
“We can look to have lots of spares but it’s really expensive and we don’t want to be wasteful, we need to be efficient, so, it’s a bit of a judgement call.”
Mercedes recently revealed that a typical accident for one of their F1 cars would cost around £300,000 to fix.
Meanwhile, Racing Point say they are NOT in discussions with Sebastian Vettel over a move in 2021.
The four-time world champion is out of contract after rejecting a new deal at Ferrari and there has been speculation that he could join Mercedes.
There was also a rumour he could join Racing Point, the team that will become Aston Martin F1 in 2021, due to his close links with Toto Wolff, who is a shareholder at the Silverstone-based team.
But Racing Point boss Otmar Szafnauer says he has not spoken to the German.
He said: “Seb and I have been friends for a long time, even before he was a Formula One driver I knew him.
“I haven’t had the conversation. I can’t speak for Seb but we all know what a great job he’s done.
“He won early on in the Toro Rosso which was fantastic, and four world championships.
“He’s had some great races and at his relatively young age of 32, he still has some good years left in him. But that’s not for me to say.
“We’re really happy with our driver line-up and they’re signed up as well, they work well together.”
Lewis Hamilton returns to track for first time in over 100 days at Silverstone
Source: Motorsport - thesun.co.uk
