Was Lewis Hamilton’s Malaysia Exit Sabotage or Just a Mirage?

So which side are you on? Is Lewis Hamilton being sabotaged by his own AMG Mercedes Formula 1 team in a pre-ordained effort to crown Nico Rosberg as World Champion? Or is Lewis throwing his toys out of the pram, simply as a heat-of-the-moment overreaction to unfortunate circumstances?

If you ventured on to social media straight after Sunday's Malaysian Grand Prix, you'd have seen plenty of reaction from both sides of the divide. The responses were along the lines "it's happened too many times to be coincidence – Mercedes is fixing results to make Rosberg win the title" or "here we go again, Lewis showing himself up as a big kid who needs to grow up".

So which is it? To paraphrase the Beastie Boys, was his exit sabotage or just a mirage?

For me, it's neither – it's more a case of déjà vu…

It's not the first time we've had a post-event outburst from Hamilton that he's come to regret in the cold light of day – or at least been forced to clarify after it's been pointed out to him that what he's said isn't acceptable to his team.

Remember there is well over 1,000 people responsible for putting those two potent, and highly-complex, Mercedes cars on the grid every race weekend – and he's representing thousands as part of the brand. Remember too that, occasionally, the 'nut behind the wheenut' can screw up – Sebastian Vettel for example.

Yes, even a four-time world champion can underestimate his braking point for Turn 1 on full tanks, and take himself (and Lewis's title rival) out. Yet I didn't see the whole of Maranello taking to Twitter to accuse the German driver of sabotaging the Scuderia's chances of success (although I'm sure Maurizio Arrivabene's reaction was repeated across the town).

Just like I didn't see German fans rise up and shout "Vettel doesn't want another German to win the F1 title!"

And yet, Lewis's post-race comments about the manner of his exit from the race were nothing short of accusatory: "My questions are to Mercedes – we have lost so many engines. There are eight drivers and mine are the only ones who has failed.

"Something or someone doesn't want me to win this year."

It's genuinely hard to know what goes on inside the mind of a thoroughbred racer like Hamilton. However, I was reminded over dinner just last week how the great Ayrton Senna would ask even the most eminent journalists in our sport that "I thought you were my friend?" if they took Alain Prost's side over an incident.

Irrational? Yes. Illogical? Certainly. Utterly single-minded with scant regard to anybody else's feelings? Abso-bloody-lutely. (Prost, incidentally, played this to his advantage by insisting it was fine for journalists to be friends with Senna – thus keeping them all sweet! Smart guy.)

I have no clue if there might be any grand, clandestine stratagem for Nico Rosberg to somehow be anointed as 2016 Formula 1 World Champion by Mercedes after two years of success with Hamilton. Would it really sabotage its own driver, giving up a nailed-on Grand Prix victory, to manipulate this outcome?

Personally, I think that's utterly preposterous. Do I think it would prefer Rosberg to win the title this year? Yeah, probably.

Just like I think the Premier League enjoyed its Leicester City fairy tale last season, yet I don't think it instructed referees to give them more free kicks or penalties.

Or too that the NFL was pleased with the way star quarterback Peyton Manning signed off with a Super Bowl victory, but I don't think it fixed the big showdown against the otherwise brilliant Carolina Panthers.

Should Rosberg win this year's World Championship it would be a different message to take on the post-season success tour – and provide a good storyline going into the all-new 2017 with Hamilton no doubt hell-bent on revenge.

There's little doubt that the 2016 development direction at Mercedes has suited Rosberg's driving style – its clever hydraulic suspension heave-element tweak resulting in improved handling towards Nico's front-end-reliant needs. It seems to have planted a seed in Hamilton's head, and perhaps even manifested itself in him chasing his setup tail to little avail in Singapore.

But hand a Grand Prix win to Red Bull Racing? No way. You could see how angry Mercedes team bosses Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda were after Barcelona this year, when they crashed out of the race together. And the same rung true in Malaysia at the weekend when Rosberg was spun around at Turn 1 and Hamilton's engine expired.

Of course, Hamilton has had poor luck, reliability-wise, this year. And he did too at points in 2015.

But don't forget Rosberg's gearbox issue in the British Grand Prix this year, or how about his suspension failure in free practice in Austria?

Imagine that happened as he turned into the high-speed Turn 8 at the Red Bull Ring – you think they'd sabotage that too? Like I said, it's preposterous.

Think further back to Rosberg's technical disaster in the 2014 title decider at Abu Dhabi, or the Singapore "substance contamination" problem. And how about the Monza engine failure last season? It sounds like the same noise by people who said that it was always Mark Webber's Red Bull that broke down when Vettel won those four titles.

And yet… Manufacturers have influenced championship campaigns in the past, and can certainly sway the outcome with raceday strategy. But the fact is that if Mercedes had wanted to 'fix' Rosberg's first championship, it could have done a far better, less messy, job of it.

Bottom line: I don't think it's good for business for Mercedes to see its cars grind to a halt in flames as the world looks on…

What we really learned is that Hamilton finds it hard to suck it up and take some misfortune sometimes. In my opinion, he's always been pretty terrible at handling adversity, unless he's behind the wheel of a car and can recover via his true talent, driving.

The way he should react is realise that what doesn't kill his title hopes can actually make him stronger. Channel that anger and frustration into a trigger for mental positivity.

He pretty much destroyed Rosberg, pace-wise, all weekend in Sepang after a run of less-than-ideal races – and certainly deserved to win that race to regain the points lead.

Like the conspiracy theorists, I think there are two ways of looking at it. One: Perhaps Lewis has surrounded himself with so many 'yes people' in his entourage that he's lost touch with the reality of things not going quite to plan. You might own a private jet, but your dogs might take a dump in it occasionally.

Two: It's borderline disingenuous if he thanks the team – when he also suspects 'they' are out to get him. Like Senna, I'm sure he's convinced himself that anyone not with him is against him. But he can't afford to include those in his own team in that thinking. Therein true paranoia lies.

Whichever is true, or none of the above, I bet there's some interesting water cooler debates in Brackley and Brixworth on Monday…

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