Red Bull's Helmut Marko claims the pressure applied by both Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in Malaysia forced Lewis Hamilton's power unit to fail whilst leading the race.
The Briton was leading comfortably when his engine failed spectacularly, costing him 25 points and the lead of the championship. Whilst Mercedes have yet to confirm the cause, Marko suspects Hamilton was using maximum power to build a gap to the charging Bulls, and that caused the failure.
"We clearly had the upper hand [in the race]!" Marko told the official Formula 1 website. "My guess is that we very likely forced [Hamilton] into that engine failure!
"We permanently put pressure on him, challenging his lead, as he knew he had to create a gap – and to go permanently full throttle was probably not the best thing for his engine."
Even without the failure, Marko believes a Red Bull victory would still have been possible.
"We had some things up our sleeves – I will not say what – just that with both cars on different strategies we would have challenged him anyway towards the end of the race."
