Mercedes has said that they are determined to prevent the drivers' world championship being decided by poor reliability, in light of the team's fourth mechanical retirement of the year during the Singapore Grand Prix as Nico Rosberg was forced to retire.
Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton took the points lead for the first time since May by winning the Singapore Grand Prix, from which teammate and rival Nico Rosberg retired.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said that they don't want to have the spin that the championship was decided because one car let the driver down, adding that they need to refocus, get their heads down and keep concentrating and work out what they can do to prevent DNFs, reliability problems, The BBC reported.
Mercedes executive director Paddy Lowe said that that has been his worry all year, and added that he has a feeling that it's reasonably even in terms of how Mercedes has let their drivers down. He said that let's hope this was the last time.
Hamilton and Rosberg have now suffered two mechanical retirements each this season, although the Briton has also lost points as a result of failures in qualifying at two further races.
Rosberg was forced to retire in Singapore because of a failed wiring loom in his steering column, which affected the car's systems. It forced him to start from the pit lane, robbed him of all steering wheel controls apart from his gearchange, which was changing up two gears at a time, and also caused the failure of his hybrid system.
Rosberg was unable to pass a Caterham and retired at his first pit stop on lap 14 when the car would not go into gear.
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It turned the German's 22-point advantage into a three-point deficit. He said that he was disappointed but was focusing on the next race in Japan.
Wolff said that Rosberg was not destroyed at all, adding that one could see him sitting outside with his wife.
Wolff said that Rosberg was very calm and the whole team was very calm, adding that they stayed cold-blooded trying to fix the problem and the German stayed very cold-blooded trying to reset the system as good as he could.