The conspiracy theorists are back in action following the Malaysian Grand Prix after Lewis Hamilton suffered yet another engine failure this season. This failure cost him the race victory and allowed Nico Rosberg to increase his championship lead, causing many fans to speculate that Mercedes has been fixing the race results. Nevertheless, Hamilton still insists that he has “100% faith in them”.
Having started from pole position and with a commanding lead in the race, the Mercedes engine gremlins returned to greet Hamilton. This put Hamilton out of the race with 15 laps to go in the race. This allowed Red Bull to score their first 1-2 finish since the 2013 Brazilian Grand Prix, also making them the first team to score a 1-2 finish, other than Mercedes, in the new hybrid V6 power unit era. With a third-place finish, Nico Rosberg also earned a lot of points for the World Drivers’ Championship title.
Lewis Hamilton discussed his engine failure and moving on in the season:
“Max [Verstappen] was in my pit window so I was just trying to push him out of it. I think I’d done that, almost. But then, on the straight, I just lost power all of a sudden. You could hear something blew and I obviously had to stop. Honestly, you’ve got to understand it from my point of view. On one side, we’ve had the most incredible success these past two years, for which I’m so grateful. These guys work so hard and we’re all feeling the pain right now. When you get out of the car – that feeling you have after leading the race and then your car fails – it’s pretty hard to say positive things at the time. As I said in the TV interviews, Mercedes have built 43 engines or however many it might be with the extra three I’ve had, and I have happen to have most of, if not all of, the failures. So, that is definitely tough to take. But I have 100% confidence in these guys. It’s my fourth year with them now and the guys in the garage and back at the factories – I have 100% faith in them. I love it here and without them I would not have won these two Championships. While the struggle is real right now and has been all year, I honestly feel that it’s a test of my will, my spirit and who I am as a person to get back in and keep fighting it head on. It’s not how you fall, it’s how you get back up. That applies not just to me but to the guys as well. I saw tears in the eyes of my mechanics so I know that we all bear the pain. But, as I said, it’s how we re-group. We have to keep in mind what we’ve already built. While in the short term it doesn’t look good and for the long-term this year it might not be so good, there are still lots of positives. There’s still five races to go and if I can perform the way I performed this weekend there’s still everything to play for. We will learn. The guys will take the engine back and they’ll understand what happened. Every time we’ve had engine issues they’ve gone away and found out why. It puts us potentially in a better position to make sure it doesn’t happen next year. All I can do is what I’ve done this weekend. Come correct, be as focused as I can possibly be, put in this kind of performance and pray that the car holds together. I still have faith and hope. That’s a powerful thing. It feels a little bit like the man above, or a higher power, is intervening a little bit. But I feel like I’ve been blessed with the opportunity firstly to be here with so many great people around me, in this great team, to have won these last two Championships with lots and lots of victories and records that I’m breaking time and time again. Whilst it does not feel great right now, I have to be grateful for all of that. If at the end of the year the higher powers don’t want me to be Champion after everything I’ve given towards it, I will have to accept that. As long as I end the year knowing that I’ve given it everything, done everything I could possibly do and that we’ve done everything we could possibly do, that’s all you can ask for. Don’t forget that I’m World Champion. I’ll be okay.”
Hamilton has suffered the majority of the failures in 2016. This has put his championship in doubt, as he is running low on engine components to use this season. He has already gone over the limit for the season, but he was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to stockpile power units at the Belgian Grand Prix.
Toto Wolff, the head of Mercedes-Benz motorsport, expressed his disappointment and the need for the team to get to the bottom of the issues:
“It’s hard to know how to sum up a day like today. I just have no words for what happened to Lewis. We feel his pain. This is a mechanical sport, with so much technology, but sometimes you get blindsided by situations with no rational explanation. It’s a freaky coincidence as to why he has suffered the majority of the engine problems this year – like the odds of throwing red six times in a row in the casino. But we take a forensic approach to our work in how we build the engines and how we analyse the failures. We always have done and we will do so again. Our guys will get to the bottom of what happened and learn from it.”
Moving on the Japanese Grand Prix, Nico Rosberg has extended his World Drivers’ Championship lead to 23 points. There are still five rounds remaining in the season, so we should prepare ourselves for a close title battle in the close of the season.
Weekend Summary: 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix
Wolff: “There is no blame game”
Grid Penalties Should Be Revised To Prevent Stockpiling
Hamilton’s Grid Penalty Increased To 55 Places
Hamilton To Drop 30 Places On Belgium Grid
