Lauda: Engine blowups 'embarrassing' & not sabotage

Oct.8 - Mercedes officials have continued to slam suggestions they are "sabotaging" Lewis Hamilton's title charge.

The reigning world champion threw fuel on the conspiracy theories in Malaysia, after suffering yet another engine problem, this time whilst on the cusp of regaining the 2016 points lead.

But Mercedes' engineering chief Paddy Lowe denied Hamilton ever "hinted" at sabotage.

"Lewis has been very clear, certainly with us, that that's completely out of the question," he said at Suzuka.

Team chairman Niki Lauda also denies that Mercedes secretly engineered Hamilton's engine blow-up at Sepang.

"Bull----," the F1 legend told the Swiss newspaper Blick.

"We wanted to give the world title to our main sponsor Petronas in Malaysia," Lauda explained. "Now we have to wait for Japan. That is embarrassing enough.

"Nico and Lewis will fight for the title between them, and hopefully neither will be stopped by technical problems. Any engine failure now would just be embarrassing," he insisted.

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Leopold Pleijsier founded F1-Fansite.com in 2001 and has followed Formula 1 since the early 1980s. He writes about daily F1 news, race weekends, drivers and the sport’s history.

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