Mercedes feared Hamilton wouldn’t make the start

With his car in a “million pieces” two hours before the start of the Canadian Grand Prix, Mercedes feared Lewis Hamilton would not be able to race.

Hamilton qualified second for Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix only for Mercedes to later find a hydraulic leak.

With the car out of parc ferme ahead of Sunday’s race, the team worked furiously to fix the leak and put Hamilton’s W10 back together.

They made it in time and the Brit took to the starting grid along with his rivals.

“What looks to be a victory was a very tough weekend for the team behind the scenes,” motorsport boss Toto Wolff told Autosport.

“We had a car that was in a million bits because of the hydraulic leak.

“We weren’t sure whether we could race it, whether it would finish the race.”

That, though, wasn’t Mercedes only concern.

Not only did the flu hit their garage but they were also worried that the engine failure that put Lance Stroll, in the customer Mercedes-powered SportPesa Racing Point car, out of FP3 could be a sign of things to come.

“Half the team was suffering from a flu, which nobody sees,” Wolff continued.

“It was just a matter of pushing through.

“We had the engine that blew up on Lance’s car, which we didn’t know if it would affect us.

“Overall it was one of the most difficult race weekends I can remember even though it didn’t look like this from the outside at all.”

That most difficult weekend resulted in a victory for Hamilton and P4 for Valtteri Bottas.

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