Red Bull takes responsibility for Lewis Hamilton engine failure

Red Bull motorsport advisor believes the team is responsible for Lewis Hamilton's engine failure during the Malaysia Grand Prix.

The Mercedes driver's race ended on lap 41 when his engine exploded as he was trying to build a gap to Red Bull pair Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.

"We clearly had the upper hand - my guess is that we very likely forced [Hamilton] into that engine failure," Marko told the official Formula 1 website."We permanently put pressure on him, challenging his lead, as he knew he had to create a gap.

"To go permanently full throttle was probably not the best thing for his engine," he added.

In fact, Dr. Marko is confident that Red Bull could have claimed the win, even if Hamilton had finished the race.

"We knew that we would be strong, but you always have to take into account what Mercedes are doing," he said. "It took quite a while to understand that we could challenge Mercedes here.

"In the beginning of the weekend we were very skeptical, but then qualifying showed we were not so far off Mercedes - and clearly ahead of Ferrari," he added. "But even without Hamilton retiring we had some things up our sleeves - I will not say what - just that with both cars on different strategies [with Verstappen having made an extra stop at that stage compared to Ricciardo] we would have challenged him anyway towards the end of the race."