Red Bull Team Principal, Christian Horner, has said the Mercedes engine change was more forced than a choice.
The team acknowledged during the week that they would need to swap the engine for a fourth before the end of the season, but gave no indication of when.
Then on Friday morning, it was confirmed that they would be switching out the Internal Combustion Engine on Hamilton’s car, and would endure a ten-place grid penalty.
The new component has been giving Hamilton a great boost in Turkey so far, posting faster laps 1.4s faster than anyone else on track.
Speaking about the swap, their closes rivals, Red Bull have said it doesn’t affect the team but rather highlights the difficulty of doing a full season on three engines.
Team boss Christian Horner said; “From what we understand, it was more a forced choice than a selected choice.
“And obviously you’ve seen that they have had problems with their other teams as well.
“It doesn’t affect us, but it does show how tough it is to get to the end of the season on three engines.
“Hopefully we can do it on four.”
Speaking earlier this week, Team Principal Toto Wolff said that timing is everything, but that a DNF for avoiding the change would be worse than receiving the penalty at one of the remaining Grands Prix.
Speaking about the change, he said; “It’s a possibility.
“When, and how, is not yet decided.
“Most important is that you don’t DNF because of a reliability issue,” Wolff continued.
“You can cope with swings, whether you finish second, third, I think that is OK, the championship is going to go long. But if you don’t finish.
“So we are looking at the parameters of the engines, making sure we don’t suffer from any reliability problems.”
Lewis Hamilton was handed a ten-place grid penalty for the Turkish Grand Prix after the team opted to take on a fourth combustion engine this weekend.
However, Hamilton won’t be starting at the back of the grid, as Max Verstappen did in Russia, because only one element on his engine has been changed.
