Hamilton was almost forced to retire from Brazilian GP - Mercedes

Mercedes has revealed that Lewis Hamilton was just one lap away from an engine failure during the Brazilian Grand Prix. The Briton was moments away from retirement during the race according to Mercedes engineers after a skyrocket in temperatures almost led to a power unit failure.

Hamilton was told he couldn't use higher engine modes for the majority of the race in his fight with Max Verstappen for race victory which only compounded the team's issues with tyre strategy after Red Bull was able to switch Verstappen onto softs leaving him to battle Hamilton to battle for the win on mediums.

After the race, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff revealed that during the race, Mercedes engineers were adamant that Hamilton was about to suffer a retirement.

"We have the engine guys here in the back, and then we have them back at base," Wolff explained.

"I have about 10 channels open, and what I could hear on the meeting channel was 'Lewis Hamilton, power unit failure imminent. It's going to fail within the next lap'.

"And I put the volume up and said, 'Excuse me, what?' And they said, 'Yeah, we have a massive problem on the power unit, it's going to fail on the next lap'.

"But it didn't fail the next lap, and I said, 'When you guys have a minute, tell me what's happening'.

"'Well, our exhaust is just about to fail, and we're overshooting all the temperature limits'.

"I said, 'So what's the fix?' They started to fix it by turning the whole thing down. The temperatures went down to below 1,000, to 980 degrees. But it's still too high! That was truly horrible."

Hamilton and the team were able to manage the issue and thanks to an ambitious and controversial move by Esteban Ocon on Verstappen to unlap himself, the 2018 champion was able to pick up the 72nd win of his career.