Lewis Hamilton facing possible Abu Dhabi grid penalty

Lewis Hamilton could face a grid penalty heading into the Formula One season finale at Abu Dhabi, with doubts over his power united lingering at Mercedes. Chief strategist James Vowles confirmed that the extent of the damage is unknown. "If we just go back a little bit and look at what happened in the race, after the first pitstop with Lewis we noticed quite a significant problem, which required a huge amount of input from a number of sources," he said in a Q&A with fans. "We have a team back in the UK at Brixworth who work alongside us on the intercom, and we have a huge team trackside working together diligently to understand what we can change on the engine to get to the end of the race. "They did a fantastic job. It wasn't one change, it was a huge number of changes across a 40-50 lap period, where they were working with Lewis to adjust various componentry and get that power unit to the end of the race. They did a fantastic job. "The net result of that, though, is that the engine has sustained some level of damage, but we don't yet understand what. "It has to be inspected and understood before we can make any decision going forward to Abu Dhabi."

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