Lewis Hamilton has been hit with a five-place grid penalty for the Sao Paulo Grand Prix in Brazil after engine Upgrade.
Lewis after investigations was noted to have taken a new Mercedes internal combustion engine for this weekend's race.
This change was discovered after Jo Bauer, the FIA's technical delegate, found something amiss with his Drag Reduction System on Friday afternoon at Interlagos.
"The uppermost rear wing element adjustable positions were checked on car number 44 for compliance with Article 3.6.3 of the 2021 Formula One Technical Regulations. The requirement for the minimum distance was fulfilled," read Bauer's report after qualifying.”
"The uppermost rear wing element adjustable positions were checked on car number 44 for compliance with Article 3.6.3 of the 2021 Formula One Technical Regulations. The requirement for the minimum distance was fulfilled," read Bauer's report after qualifying.
"But the requirement for the maximum of 85mm, when the DRS system is deployed and tested in accordance with TD/011-19, were not fulfilled," he added.
That leaves Hamilton with an uphill battle as he sits 19 points behind title rival Max Verstappen in Brazil.
After first practice Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said they had changed the unit because they were seeing a gradual drop off in performance, rather than because there was a fault.
"We feel that we can score more points [by changing the ICE in Brazil]," he said. "We have degradation on the engine that until the end of the season is just going to continue to decrease in power and we haven’t yet realised why that is, but we are just seeing it creep down.”
"Without going into specifics, every engine is degrading and we’ve seen that over the past years over 1,000 kilometres there is a certain amount of kilowatts that the engine is degrading. And ours is just degrading much more than in the average of the past years and that increases from weekend to weekend.”
"If we keep the engine we are for sure not going to be competitive in Saudi and Abu Dhabi," Wolff noted.
The steward also announced that the rear wing assembly of Hamilton's car will be removed and impounded overnight.