Wolff brands Hamilton conspiracy theorists 'lunatics'

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Toto Wolff has branded conspiracy theorists as "lunatics" after Lewis Hamilton was hit by more reliability worries during the Russian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was unable to run in the final part of qualifying on Saturday as a result of a repeat of the MGU-H issue which had hampered him in China, leaving him 10th on the grid. Mercedes worked overnight and flew out identical replacement parts in order to carry out a power unit change on Sunday morning which would not break parc ferme regulations and avoid a penalty.

In the race, Hamilton had climbed to second place and was catching team-mate Nico Rosberg when a loss of water pressure forced him to back off and bring the car home in second, with Wolff angered by any suggestions of the team not backing the defending champion.

"Of course we don’t do it deliberately and the team has been abused in some of the social media and conspiracy theories are out there," Wolff said. "My response to this is I don’t want to even ignore these lunatics who think that we would harm a driver - our driver - who has been a double world champion for us, he hasn’t let us down and we wouldn’t let him down. This is a mechanical sport and we wouldn’t let these things happen.

"As a matter of fact we had a problem on Nico’s car which gave us some grey hair during the race, a problem on the MGU-K drive. It looked like at a certain stage he wouldn’t finish the race.

"So we are pushing the limits on the chassis and on the engine side a lot in order to have a competitive car and this is why we are winning races but also if you push the limits at a certain stage you mess up."

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AS IT HAPPENED: 2016 Russian Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.