Poor Lewis Hamilton. It's one thing to lose what looks like being a guaranteed race win when you have yourself to blame -- making a mistake and putting it in the wall, or colliding with a backmarker when blue flag frustration becomes too much to bear -- and another thing entirely when your loss looks to have been an act of god.
Mechanical failures are the worst way to retire, feeling as though the wheel of fortune has spun you from top to bottom so rapidly that there's nothing left but the twin senses of injustice and despair, and perhaps a little nausea on the side.
When reports of Hamilton's post-race statements in the TV pen began to filter into the press room -- "someone doesn't want me to win" -- the initial assumption was that the Mercedes driver was referring to some form of celestial power, be it god, the universe, or karma.
But once the full selection of quotes had been transcribed, it rather looked as though Hamilton was pointing the figure not at the big guy upstairs, but at nefarious forces within his own team. He may not have used the word himself, but the implication was more sabotage than it was shoddy luck.
"My questions are to Mercedes -- we have lost so many engines," Hamilton told the BBC immediately after the race. "There are eight drivers and mine are the only ones who has failed. Someone has to give me some answers and it is not acceptable. Something or someone doesn't want me to win this year.
"It's a brand new engine," he added. "I've done one race with it. I did P3 with it, qualifying, it's a brand new engine from the three that I had. It's just odd. There's been like 43 engines from Mercedes [this season] and only mine have gone."
But an hour or so later, having had time to reflect, Hamilton told his open print media session that his comments referred not to the team, but to some form of higher power or celestial being.
"It feels right now that the man above, or a higher power is intervening a little bit but I feel like I've been blessed with so many big opportunities, firstly being here with all these people around here, the opportunity in this great team winning the last two championships. Lots and lots of big trophies and records that I'm breaking time and time [again]..."
While Lewis can hardly be blamed for feeling himself to be a victim of a string of reliability issues that have plagued car #44 -- and only #44 -- since the start of the season, it is unfortunate that the Briton felt the need to make comments that appeared to ask questions of his own team (and the associated Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, based in Brixworth). Fomenting discontent within the ranks -- even unwittingly, and even in the passionate heat of 25 points lost -- rarely does anyone any favours.
That this latest failure came at a race which would have seen Hamilton equal Nico Rosberg in the championship standings will have been a real kick in the teeth. That it took place at a grand prix paid for by Mercedes team sponsor Petronas won't have helped matters either. And the fact that when Hamilton drew his stricken car to a stop it was on the very part of the track painted with Petronas branding will have been good news only for the "right place, right time" snappers now able to command high prices for their photos of the incident.
Toto Wolff burying his head in his hands on the global television feed says it all about the feeling in the Mercedes garage on Sunday afternoon. This could have been the weekend in which Mercedes sewed up the constructors' championship, and now that most profitable of moments will be delayed by at least one more race weekend. The fact that the WCC is essentially inevitable -- and has been since what feels like the dawn of time -- hardly helps.
Following Hamilton's understandable yet undesirable outburst, Mercedes will head to Suzuka with a sense of discomfort within the ranks. Winning races and titles is very much a team effort, and despite the praise Hamilton heaped on his own race crew, the very fact that one of the team's drivers is publicly asking questions that imply (at best) bias and (at worst) outright sabotage is only going to lower morale in a team that should be celebrating their most dominant season yet.