No you heard right, there is a change he could take another engine.
Mercedes not have a good time , they seem to have lost there invincibility tag.
Found this.
Olav Mol has shared more information about the Mercedes engine problems prior to qualifying. Valtteri Bottas has now put in his sixth combustion engine and it's not out of luxury. It took Mercedes a while to identify the problem, but Mol knows it is probably to do with the pneumatic valves.
At Mercedes they are shouting, 'No, it's different, we have another problem with the pneumatic valves. I heard that from Karun Chandhok. He said to me that he knows someone who works on those engines at the factory. That seems to be the problem."
Valve springs used to be used in
Formula 1, but pneumatic valves have been used for some time now.
"So basically they push those valves down with a puff of air and with a vacuum, they are brought back up again," Mol explains the operation.
"There's a bottle on there, there's 200 bar open. That is so high. You'll never get that closed perfectly, also because air has to go out."
He continues:
"Five percent leakage, they can ride out a whole race on that, that's all okay, but when it goes towards ten percent (like with George Russell in Austria) then you have to stop. Then you see one of those guys go in with a bottle and they re-pressurise the system to keep the engine running."