Lewis Hamilton offers Ferrari grid penalty update

Lewis Hamilton does not envisage needing to take a grid penalty later in the season, despite it being commonplace to do so towards the end of the campaign.

Even with Ferrari qualifying for engine upgrades as part of the FIA's Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) programme, Hamilton thinks his pool of power units will be "okay" for the rest of the year.

Lando Norris, Kimi Antonelli and Liam Lawson (on behalf of Isack Hadjar) have already served grid drops amongst the top four teams, and George Russell is expected to face the same fate during the Americas triple-header.

Charles Leclerc, in the sister SF-26, may well take a penalty this weekend in Baku, if the Scuderia has not been able to salvage the power unit he was using when he crashed heavily in the opening stages of the Italian Grand Prix.

But Hamilton's own retirement — which was unrelated to the power unit — at the Madring means he has now underutilised the components available to him.

"I currently don't foresee that I have to take a penalty, given that obviously we didn't do the mileage on the last race; I gained a race," the seven-time F1 drivers' champion told media, including RacingNews365.

"So I think we should be okay."

Hamilton: Decision to be made later in season

Hamilton did, however, concede that he will progressively be losing performance from the components in his pool, which may lead the Italian team to change its mind.

If Ferrari does indeed swap out some of the power unit parts, the 41-year-old will have to serve a grid drop.

"But naturally, with engines, from new to when they've done several races, there is a difference in performance, Hamilton added.

"So we will make that decision later on in the year."