Lewis Hamilton’s bid to land a record eighth world championship has taken a severe blow after being hit with a 10-place grid penalty for this weekend’s Turkish Grand Prix. However, his Mercedes team have been forced into an engine change ahead of Sunday’s race, taking him over the allocation of three available to him over the season leading to his demotion down the grid. Following Hamilton’s engine failure in practice at the Dutch Grand Prix, the Silver Arrows had reliability concerns over their two remaining power units and by changing the engine now limits the nightmare scenario of him suffering an engine failure during a race. Hamilton had been coy over whether his team would need to take a penalty, saying: ‘At the moment, I still have engines numbers two and three.

Follow MotorMouth on social media:

• 
• 
• 
•