Johnny Herbert: Mercedes conspiracy against Lewis Hamilton 'nonsense' and Brit can still win world title

Disaster: Lewis Hamilton’s engine blows, costing him victory in Malaysia and leaving him exasperated
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7 October 2016

The idea that there’s a conspiracy against Lewis Hamilton is nonsense.

Mercedes wouldn’t do that. Why would they effectively put a flame thrower in the back of one of their cars?

If they’d wanted to sabotage the car, there would certainly be other ways of doing it but that clearly wasn’t the root of Lewis’s problem in Malaysia.

Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda love what he does in the car, in fact they’re a little bit in awe of him. Those two, the mechanics and the engineers, are all on his side rooting for him every race weekend.

I think Lewis knows that but his reaction straight after his latest race retirement was understandable.

There’s frustration when it happens, in the heat of the moment you’re looking to point the finger and apportion some blame.

Is anyone against him? No, not at all but I feel sorry for him. He did an outstanding job in Sepang, he outqualified his team-mate by four-tenths of a second and then dominated the entire race until disaster struck with 15 laps to go.

It leaves Lewis 23 points down in the championship but things can change so quickly and there appears to be a storm brewing in Japan this weekend so we could get some dicey conditions come the race itself here at Suzuka.

Can he claw that back? Yes. Will he bounce back? Yes, probably. This championship is not over.

Saying that, though, there are drivers who have probably deserved the world championship but haven’t finished the season with it. Two British examples spring to mind: one was Nigel Mansell with that blow-out in Adelaide in 1986, and the other was the collision between Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher that cost Damon the title in 1994.

Lewis has two engines left and he knows he can’t afford another setback. I’ve heard it said that he could be in some way responsible for the engine failures but that’s not true.

The issues that have caused the retirements are unconnected and the sport now is such that Lewis’s driving style can’t be responsible for the blow-outs. That’s simply a misnomer and it’s nothing Lewis has done wrong.

Simply put, he can’t influence an engine’s demise, it’s just bad luck and he has probably had more of that than Nico Rosberg.

You’d have to say Nico was probably a tad fortunate to end up on the podium on Sunday after two coming togethers on track.

But Lewis isn’t dead and buried and while it might sound a bit crazy, this could actually play to his advantage. He could well be even more fired up for the last five races of the season.

He just needs to make sure he doesn’t get caught up in anything and simply focuses on his own job and what he can do on the track.

I know he said he wasn’t dwelling on what happened in Malaysia and I, for one, believe him. He can’t afford to.

Just imagine if he does come back from this and wins the world title — and it’s entirely plausible. It would make it that little bit more special.

There’s a lot still balancing on a knife edge: both Lewis and Nico knowing their engines could go, plus there’s the fact that Red Bull are getting quicker by the race.

Obviously it’s not that simplistic but in basic terms were you to strap a Mercedes engine into the Red Bull, the Red Bull would be the quickest car on the grid.

Both Malaysia winner Daniel Ricciardo and team-mate Max Verstappen still have a key role in deciding the championship in the sense of how and where they might deny the Mercedes drivers valuable points.

For that pair, these last races are almost a precursor for next season when I expect them to be vying for the world championship.

For now, though, it’s just Lewis versus Nico.

Right to go down electric avenue

It was interesting to see Mercedes take out an option to enter a team into Formula E from 2018. Mercedes, as car manufacturers, are realists and realise that this is the way the world is going, and will it come to a point in 10, 20 or 30 years where we only see battery-powered cars? Tesla have been the ones leading the field but Mercedes realise it’s the way forward for their road cars in particular, and it’s good to see the likes of them, Jaguar and Renault looking towards Formula E. But in no way is this a threat to their F1 operation. I don’t see that at all, they’re simply broadening their horizons.

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