Lewis Hamilton's Malaysia fury over 'unacceptable' engine failure

Lewis Hamilton, 2025, generic — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Stories

Lewis Hamilton's Malaysia fury over 'unacceptable' engine failure

Hamilton's painful title nightmare 10 years on

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Saturday 3 October 2026 17:57

Make us your Google favorite

Lewis Hamilton has many things to be angry about over at Ferrari this season but there will be perhaps be something else on the seven-time world champion's mind at Sepang.

October 2 is a dark day in the Hamilton calendar, especially this year, as it marks the ten-year anniversary of his most infamous race retirement of all time. It may even be one of the biggest ever in the sport.

To set the scene, Hamilton was on the back foot to his Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg in the race for the 2016 world championship.

Article continues under video

Hamilton hadn't won for three races, including the previous race in Singapore where Rosberg triumphed and moved eight points clear in the world championship.

Luck seemed to be shining for Hamilton at Sepang though when at the start of the race he led from pole while Rosberg got punted into a spin by Sebastian Vettel, putting him at the back of the pack.

The 2016 Mercedes was one of the most dominant cars in F1 history so while the German was on course to recover to fourth, it would have still left him five points back behind Hamilton in the title battle with six races left.

Hamilton's Sepang nightmare

Then on Lap 41 of 56, the utterly unthinkable happened. Hamilton's Mercedes engine blew up in spectacular fashion, caused by a big-end bearing failure following a loss of oil pressure marking just his second retirement of the season after the Mercedes drivers crashed into each other in Spain.

Hamilton's famous radio message of 'oh, nooooo, nooooooooo!' summed it all up. On the cusp of getting back into lead of the world championship, he would be heading into the final six grands prix 23 points behind his team-mate who thanks to Hamilton's retirement bagged a third place.

After the race, Hamilton said 'someone didn't want him to win' before clarifying he was referring to a higher power rather than someone at Mercedes, but the team were not without criticism from the British driver.

Although Hamilton had only one engine failure all season in races, as opposed to Rosberg's zero in races, Hamilton demanded to know why that in general accounting for all sessions he was the only one getting engine problems.

Hamilton slams Mercedes

He said: "My question is to Mercedes. We have so many engines made for drivers, but mine are the only ones failing this year.

"Someone needs to give me some answers because this is not acceptable. We are fighting for the championship and only my engines are failing. It does not sit right with me.

"Someone doesn't want me to win this year, but I won't give up. I will keep pushing."

Of course when Hamilton says something like that, the wild conspiracy theories on Mercedes sabotaging him so that Rosberg could win the championship started popping up.

When F1 is an advertising billboard for a brand, why Mercedes would want to show the world their engine blowing up in spectacular fashion makes zero sense whatsoever.

Mercedes just wanted a one-two every race, they couldn't really care about anything else as long as they won both titles.

Paddy Lowe denied Mercedes were favouring Nico Rosberg

Mercedes ridicules conspiracy theorists

The team's then technical chief Paddy Lowe confirmed as much saying: "If we were good enough to arrange such sabotage, we wouldn't have any failures.

"F1 is a tough business. The engineering operates right at the boundaries of performance so things do go wrong.

"Anyone with an ounce of intelligence analysing the situation would realise that the prospect of us designing a piece of equipment to fail at that precise moment… if we were that good we would be able to control everything."

Lowe used the opportunity to hit back at any Rosberg favouritism accusations.

"If we invent something that makes us quicker then of course we want it in both cars because we want to win the race," he added.

"We never hold back and never contemplate it. Anyone who is intelligent can work it out."

Nico Rosberg (left) won the 2016 world championship by finishing second in Abu Dhabi

How Hamilton lost the 2016 F1 title

More damage was done in Hamilton's next race in Japan where in a clumsy display he could only finish third while Rosberg won again.

This left the championship in a position where Rosberg could finish second to Hamilton in every race for the remaining four races and still be champion... and that's exactly what happened, with Rosberg winning his only title by just five points.

Admittedly, it's an incredibly raw moment in Hamilton's career even 10 years on. It's not something he will be able to laugh off in time either, this one stung.

And it's the one that cost him his eighth world championship long before the concept of Abu Dhabi 2021 was even known.

LEWIS HAMILTON: Career record with every pole, win and title

Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

View full biography

F1 Lewis Hamilton Mercedes