This season the Formula 1 teams only have two jokers, which gives the teams two opportunities to break curfew without being penalised for doing so. Mercedes have used both of their jokers.

Mercedes face pit lane start if they break curfew again

The first was used back in Hungary when, unhappy with the balance of the cars, the Mercedes mechanics worked extra hours to find solutions.

Lewis Hamilton went onto qualify in fifth place before putting his W15 on the podium while George Russell was caught out by rain falling during a red flag and promptly eliminated in Q1. He recovered to finish eighth in the Grand Prix.

The two-time Grand Prix winner was the reason Mercedes used their second curfew as his W15 required a new chassis when he recorded a 35G crash in FP2 at the Mexican Grand Prix.

The team worked overnight to repair Russell’s car, the Briton fifth in qualifying and the Grand Prix.

It was, as Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin put it, a “very, very late night in Mexico City trying to get George’s car back together”.

“We had to break the curfew,” he added in Mercedes’ post-race Mexican GP debrief, “which you are only allowed to do two times each year. This was our second one so that luxury will not remain with us for the rest of the season. The team worked until the very early hours of the morning, went back, had a few hours of sleep, and came in again.

“It was a great job by the garage. Once Lewis’s crew had finished his car, they all moved on to George’s. With a chassis swap it really is starting from scratch but for a lot of that we had both crews working on it which was how you are able to almost achieve the impossible of getting a car just built in a few hours overnight.”

Mercedes are hoping neither Russell nor Hamilton have another big Friday crash before the season ends in Abu Dhabi as the next time the team breaks curfew, it will come with a penalty for both cars. Shovlin revealed should they suffer a Friday crash, the team would instead sacrifice track time in third practice rather than work through the night on the car.

“If we needed to do it on another Friday night, the penalty is actually defined in the sporting regulations, and it is both cars starting from the pit lane,” Shovlin explained.

“The reality is you would do everything to make sure you do not need to break that again, and what that would probably mean in practice is that your car is not ready for FP3. You can come in when you can on Saturday morning and then you just work as long as you can through FP3 to hopefully get the car ready for qualifying, but fingers crossed we are not going to be in that situation.”

Russell’s crash was also the final blow for Mercedes’ budget cap, Toto Wolff revealing Mercedes will upgrade the W15 in Brazil with a new floor but then they’re done for the season.

“In cost cap land, nevertheless, it’s a tricky situation,” he told the media including PlanetF1.com. “So, these three shunts put us on the back foot, and certainly the one that happened before yesterday was massive. We had to change. We had to opt for a completely new chassis, that is a tremendous hit in the cost cap, and we probably have to dive down on what we put on the car.

“So we will be having two upgrade packages in Brazil, two floors, but that’s basically it, there’s nothing else that’s going to come. We have certain limitation on parts where we need to be creative.

“Are we managing this? – And certainly there is an impact. There is an impact on how many development parts we can put on the car, because the answer is zero.”