Hamilton explains his post-race comments
Immediately after the race, Lewis Hamilton pushed Mercedes to start a deep investigation on why the reliability of his car has been so poor this year while the seven other Mercedes-propelled cars have been working pretty reliably so far this season.
The three-time world champion raised concerns about the reliability of his Mercedes title contender and required answers from his team for the series of reliability issues which hampered him in his fierce fight for the world title against his team-mate Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton, however, explained that his team still enjoys his faith and trust because of its ceaseless work it has done over the past years.
“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.”
The quadruple world champion expressed his concerns and raised questions on why only his engines had failures while many other Mercedes power units have worked faultlessly so far this season.
“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.”
The Briton also stated that this year’s reliability issues won’t have any influence on his love towards Mercedes. He also wanted to reassure everyone that Mercedes is the squad which helped him to win the last two world championships.
“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.”
Hamilton is known for his analytical, intelligent approach to racing and life, unique mind-set and intense emotions. He, therefore, stressed out that difficult situations like this year’s failures make him stronger as a person.
“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.”
Hamilton can now see the positive side of his problems. He is sure that his team will recognize the issues which caused the failure and make sure that it does not occur again in the future.
“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,” concluded Hamilton.
