Mercedes has revealed the lengths it went to in order to fix Lewis Hamilton's engine ahead of the Russian Grand Prix and how it involved help from F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone.
Hamilton suffered his second successive MGU-H issue in qualifying at the Russian Grand Prix, forcing him to start tenth. He switched back to his original engine for 2016, albeit with a brand new turbocharger and MGU-H, after Mercedes worked on it overnight.
In order not to breach parc ferme regulations and force Hamilton into a pit-lane start, the world champions were required to fly out a brand new fuel system on a chartered flight from the UK, which arrived in the early hours of Sunday morning. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff admitted after the race the quick turnaround was a team effort, with Ecclestone helping the item get swiftly through Russian customs.
"It was a team's effort from many people involved," Wolff explained. "Niki [Lauda] tried to organise the plane and the slot. We had various options at a certain stage and had to choose which one would come in earliest. Paddy's [Lowe] assistant Nicole sorted out the airport and we got the plane, got the bit on the plane, got the guy on the plane ... and Bernie sorted the customs!
"The detail was that the plane landed with the box and within 90 seconds the box was in the car on the way to the airport, so I don't want to know how he sorted that! So yes he played a huge role in making Lewis start."
Hamilton's engine woes were not restricted to Saturday, with a water pressure problem halting his charge at mid-distance when he had been cutting the gap to teammate Nico Rosberg. Wolff is not ruling out the possibility that issue was caused by the quick repair job Mercedes had to do overnight.
"Obviously the guys had a tremendously tough job overnight to take the car apart and put the car back together. Because we didn't identify the root cause of the problem yet it was important to diligently put everything together. During the race, after the pit stop, we saw a sudden drop in water pressure which was continuing to fall. That looked like a terminal failure.
"We don't know the root cause yet, probably somewhere in the assembly or somewhere on the chassis side -- that remains to be seen. It stabilised at a certain stage and then Lewis carried the car over the finish line.
"We saw a drop in the water pressure, which isn't yet identified where it comes from. It looks most obvious that by taking the car apart that might have created it, but I don't know."
When asked if he was concerned about further consequences on the new engine from the water leak, Wolff said: "Yes, we need to analyse that. The water pressure continued to drop, stabilised for a certain moment and then continued to drop. But it could be that the engine got a large slap and we need to find out if we can keep it on the pool or not."
As for the original MGU-H problem, Mercedes is still no closer to getting to the root of what caused it to fail in China, which moved Hamilton on to his second engine of the season, or Russia.
"Not yet. It was the same failure both times, in Shanghai and here. We thought again that we have identified the reason and we haven't got the final assessment, that's going to be flown back to Brixworth and analysed. Maybe the failure yesterday was a consequence of the failure in Shanghai. But again this is a theory and I'm not sure."
The scale of the job Mercedes did to give Hamilton the best engine possible for the grand prix helps explain the frustration within the team about conspiracy theories on social media, which Niki Lauda labelled "bulls---" and Wolff said are being pedalled by "lunatics" sitting in bed with their laptops on their chest.