A distracted Lewis Hamilton used the Japanese Grand Prix press conference to brush off controversy around his Malaysia retirement and reiterate his belief in Mercedes.
Hamilton retired from the lead in Sepang when his engine blew 16 laps from the finish, leaving him 23 points behind teammate Nico Rosberg in the title fight. The retirement was Hamilton's third major engine problem of the season and the Briton's initial quotes -- "someone doesn't want me to win"-- caused controversy after the race. He later clarified he had been referring to God.
Though it was a key topic of discussion Thursday's press conference in Suzuka Hamilton, who spent much of the session playing with his phone, brushed off the questions about his failure.
"I've not been thinking about the last race," he said. "Usually when I leave a race I think about a lot of other things going on. I was in Tokyo enjoying my time, it is one of my three favourite cities in the world. [In Sepang] It was good [before the failure], I was happy with it and hope I can continue like that here."
Hamilton did not feel the need to speak about the engine failure having addressed the conspiracy theories and outlining his belief in Mercedes on his social media channels in the days since.
"You can go on my Instagram, I've put all my feelings on there. They [fans] have the right to their own opinions but as you've seen from my post you see how passionate I am about this team and my guys."
One point of note was the world champion's Facebook page, which has featured several posts about his team (see one example below) in recent days.
When asked why he and his social media team had chosen this week to share those posts, he said: "I had been planning it for a while as we had been building it up for a couple of weeks. It turned out to be the perfect time to do it..."
Having spent a long time between questions looking at his phone Hamilton -- who posted a Snapchat of himself as a rabbit surrounded by carrots, while sitting in the press conference with the caption "This s--- is killing me" -- the world champion said he was just trying to pass the time.
After a journalist asked what he was doing on his phone, he replied: "Huh? Oh, just some funny snaps of us drivers. Hey man, we've been doing this a long, long time and it is the same thing each time so you've got to keep adding new things to it."