Niki Lauda has labelled suggestions Mercedes would intentionally sabotage Lewis Hamilton's car "ridiculous and stupid" after his retirement at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Hamilton looked to be easing towards his first win since July in Sepang when his engine failed on lap 41, meaning he is now 23 points behind teammate Nico Rosberg with five races to go. After the race Hamilton questioned why, out of all the eight drivers equipped with a Mercedes power unit this season, he is the only one to have had numerous failures and issues.
Hamilton suffered failures in China and Russia, and then had to take a hefty grid penalty in Belgium to stockpile three fresh engines -- one of which subsequently failed in Malaysia. But Lauda says it is ridiculous to think Mercedes would favour one driver over another, especially considering Hamilton has won two world titles with the team.
"Honestly, we've worked for him and for Nico in a perfect way," Lauda said. "He won two championships so far with us, we finished the most races ever. So what do you think, we just started sabotaging? It's completely ridiculous and stupid."
When asked if Mercedes cares who wins the 2016 title out of Hamilton and Rosberg, Lauda said: "We work for both cars the same way, we let them race the same way. All these questions are ridiculous."
Lauda, who also said Hamilton will not be fined for the original comments as they were made in the heat of the moment and were later clarified, thinks the only thing Mercedes can do is apologise.
"I have to tell you one thing. I know Lewis very well and he will not accuse the team. His interpretation, I cannot accept it, because Lewis knows we do everything we can to give him the best car and the best engine.
"I personally feel very sorry because my job is engine and team, so I am responsible for the engine. So I really feel sorry for him and I apologised to him that the engine failed."
Mercedes is looking into the root cause of the failure.
"This was a young engine, not an old one, so we do not know the cause. So if we don't know the cause so if we do not know the cause, no-one can say we sabotaged -- this is ridiculous. If you speak to Lewis directly I guess he will not say this.
"We will have every investigation we've had before. But I cannot give you the explanation to this failure because we don't know what it is, we need to take it home and check it."