Insight: Why Lewis Hamilton must not let new F1 engine failure affect his approach

Lewis Hamilton took his time after retiring from the Malaysian Grand Prix before coming out to face the media.

He was disappointed naturally to have lost a race that he had fully under his control, but his comments questioning Mercedes' ability to make equal engines for eight drivers and an insinuation about 'something or someone doesn't want me to win' were not made in the heat of the moment.

But none of that gives rise to the kind of conspiracy theories that have done the rounds this afternoon, following the race. Hamilton has clearly had his fair share of power unit problems this season, which is why he had to take new engines into his pool at the Belgian Grand Prix, with the penalties involved with that.

He has said before that he doesn't understand why all the bad luck seems to fall on him, but the trend is at risk of becoming a defining feature of the season.

Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe responded: "This can be a very harsh sport but no failure is planned. For some reason, which is completely unrelated to any intention or any individual performance, a number of things have gone on in Lewis's car this year."

Niki Lauda said that he too had experienced disappointment like Hamilton's in his career and made an emotional comment in the heat of the moment, but added, "What do you guys think, suddenly we start to sabotage? Why? It's completely ridiculous and stupid.

"We work for both cars in the same way. All these questions are ridiculous.

"If a driver is upset - I have been upset a couple of times in my racing career and I said some rubbish. I don't want to say Lewis said rubbish, but these things can happen.

"It's emotion, which is fully acceptable and there is nothing wrong."

Realising the wave of conspiracy theories his comments had unleashed, Hamilton later put out a post on Facebook saying, "I have 100% faith in my team, they have worked so hard both at the track, and factory, and I want to say a HUGE thank you to them. I know we've had all these problems but it's not how we fall, it's how we get up. It's not how we are in moments of comfort than define us, but how we are in the face of adversity. We are champions and that's how we will move forward. I will, we will, NEVER give up!"

Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggested that Hamilton's engine had failed because his drivers put so much pressure on him with their split strategies early in the race. It's true that at several points Hamilton had to push to the maximum to build a gap and - with Rosberg not in contention with him - it was one of the rare occasions that Mercedes has been obliged to turn everything up to the maximum to try to build a gap.

But whether that was enough to push the engine into destruction is a moot point.

The more important question is how Hamilton reacts to this at the next round and gets back into the title fight with five rounds to go. Rosberg has a 23 point lead and that means that - unless he suffers a retirement - he needs just one more win to be able to follow Hamilton home in second in the remaining events and still be the champion.

Of course sport does not work as cleanly as that and Mercedes, for all their dominance this season, have only had four 1-2 finishes. So the run in will not follow that script and Rosberg knows he still has plenty of work to do.

Hamilton arrived in Singapore looking like he was not on his A Game and the weekend's results confirmed it. In Malaysia he was full of intent all weekend and performed at a very high level until the engine let go. Nothing less than that level will do now for him to fight his way back into contention, unless Rosberg suffers a mechanical failure or a more damaging version of the collision which dropped him to 21st place at the start.

Are Red Bull close enough to complicate the picture? Certainly this was another strong weekend for the team, following on from Singapore where Daniel Ricciardo troubled Rosberg throughout and finished just 0.4s behind him.

Suzuka will be another track where Red Bull will compete; they should be very strong in the first and second sectors of the lap and will lose a little ground in the final sector with the straights.

Mercedes' advantage is still in qualifying, where they seem to have a half second margin which gives them the track position at the start. Their getaways have improved lately, so the areas where Red Bull can get ahead are mainly limited to strategy and reliability.