Hamilton says Mercedes crew has done nothing wrong
Lewis Hamilton has defended his mechanics after some fans used social media to attack Mercedes and accused the team of favouring Nico Rosberg.
Hamilton said the crew had done nothing wrong, but also made it clear that he was happy to see such emotion from his supporters.
"I'm really proud of my guys, [and] the guys who flew over last night with new parts," said Hamilton. "Particularly on my side of the garage they're definitely having a hard time at the moment. Since I joined this time I've had a group of guys, then for no particular reason it was swapped. Those guys have come over and we've had some bad experiences, and for sure I can only imagine they are feeling the pressure, and it's nothing to do with them, they're doing a fantastic job."
Regarding the conspiracy theorists he said: "Firstly the people that might be saying that are feeling whatever pain that I am feeling. That's the thing, we win and we lose together. They're feeling the hurt and emotions that you go through because we're connected in that way, that's a beautiful thing.
"Naturally in any sport or any situation the easiest thing is to jump to the negative. I just want to assure them as I said before my guys are doing a fantastic job, and it's not their fault."
He made an intriguing observation about the investigation into the problems he had in China.
"There are things that I've tried to understand and I've asked to be informed of what's going on in the process. For example after the last race I didn't get an email of the report, so I didn't actually know about that. Later on I got here and they said we should have emailed you. Next week I'll get all the information, and if it's not sent to me, I'll make sure I'll get it. Just because I want to be a part of the process, and there's a lot of input I can have, and help. Ultimately we're a team. We win and we lose together, so it's about us pulling together."
Meanwhile Hamilton admitted he was frustrated by the two reprimands that have left him one away from a potential 10-place penalty, recalling problems he had in his karting days.
"I'm just aware that there's most likely going to be at least one 10-place penalty in the future, because I've got one more reprimand to go. The last one was bloody ridiculous. It's quite funny, when I was in karting there was one steward, he was just there to make everyone's weekend a bad weekend."
"And I'm starting to have reminiscent experiences... Families would turn up and spend so much money to be there on the weekend and there was one guy, a complete ass this guy was... and I heard he's still there, he just wanted to ruin everyone's weekend. I've started to see sides of him [this year]!"
He added: "I thought I'd give you something to write about, I'm sure you're going to take that and knock that out of the park and write something interesting..."