Much has been said and written about Lewis Hamilton's misfortune during the Malayisan Grand Prix, blame was attributed to the team and then to some higher power.
But the reality is that the reigning Formula 1 world champion - who considers himself to be the number one driver at Mercedes - trails his teammate and title rival Nico Rosberg in the championship points standings by 23 points and has two engines left for the remaining five races.
Hamilton said in the aftermath of his Sepang setback, "For Mercedes I'm the number one driver, so for sure when these things happen I want to understand what that is and how they are going to go about making sure that does not happen again."
"I need to understand why these keep happening because we've got 43 engines. There's eight Mercedes cars out there, powered by the same engine as mine, and mine happens to fail."
"Right now my concern is that I've got these two engines and I want to make sure they can treat them with whatever they can to make sure they last. If that means not doing a session, I will not do a session. If that's what I've got to do, because I'll do whatever it takes to see through the race," insisted the triple world champion.
And added, "I think there's times where you are growing through experiences but at some point there's a point of diminishing returns in terms of growth and getting through all these experiences. I'm pretty strong already.
"But we do learn, the guys will take the engine back and they'll learn from it, they'll understand why. Every time we've had engine issues, they've gone away and found out why and that puts us in potentially a better position to make sure it doesn't happen next year," mused Hamilton.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff explained how the team would react to Hamilton's situation, "We have two engines left, one that has run three races and one that is brand new. We will leave no stone unturned to check them for the next races."
"Having said that, it is already the way we do things, that we are forensic in our approach and how we check all the bits. Whatever needs to be done to look at that specific failure today will be done.
"But missing a practice session is harming his weekend overall, so we would want to come to the race and have a more reliable situation," concluded Wolff.
Technical failures that have hampered Hamilton's quest for a fourth Formula 1 world title:
- ERS failure during qualifying for the Chinese Grand Prix. He started from 22nd on the grid and finished seventh.
- ERS failure during qualifying for the Russian Grand Prix in Q3. He started 10th on the grid and finished second.
- Engine mode issue during the European Grand Pris. He finished fifth from 10th on the grid thanks to a crash in qualifying.
- Hydraulics fault during FP2 at the Singapore Grand Prix. He finished third.
- An engine blow-out while comfortably leading the Malaysian Grand Prix.
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