Mercedes has revealed that the precise reason for Nico Rosberg's retirement from the Singapore GP was "contamination".

"Forensic analysis has revealed that the steering column electronic circuits were contaminated with a foreign substance," the team tweeted on Friday afternoon. "The contamination was not visible and did not manifest itself until Sunday as Nico went to the grid. The result was an intermittent short circuit in the electronic circuits meaning Nico could not command clutch or engine settings.

"Fresh parts will be used at the forthcoming races," the team added. "Our hard work on reliability processes will continue at the same intensive level."

Sometime later, as the conspiracy theorists, began to emerge, the German team added: "To clarify, the contaminant was a substance used in normal pre-event servicing of the component."

Rosberg's retirement meant that teammate and title rival Lewis Hamilton, who won the race, was able to leapfrog the German in the championship, turning what was a 22 point deficit into a 3 point lead.

Speaking earlier this week, team boss Toto Wolff admitted that the German team must get on top of its reliability issues.

"If we could do anything more to prevent further retirements we would be doing it," said Wolff. "I would break my arm again to make it happen!. It's something we need to get on top of - we have a missile of a car but, in terms of reliability, we are having issues.

"We have a great group of people in our reliability team who are dedicated to quality," he added. "We're very proud of the structures they are putting into place - and that's what makes it even more astonishing that we keep having these issues. These things take time to get a grip on - but we will not stop until we stop suffering these DNFs. We have had four of them now and it would not be satisfying at all to have the Championship decided because one car let the driver down. We need to refocus, get our heads down and keep concentrating on preventing these reliability problems reoccurring."

Chris Balfe

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by stoney, 27/09/2014 20:46

"@Hardliner: really?"

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2. Posted by kiwi2wheels, 27/09/2014 14:28

"Do they think that the rest of the world is made up of people who are as f *****g stupid as they are ??!!

Inmates are running the corporate asylum ........."

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3. Posted by Stitch431, 27/09/2014 13:54

"works better than team orders, since it is easier to say "I know notin...""

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4. Posted by f1khun, 27/09/2014 11:12

"After the Spa incident, Rosberg was put on public shame-display, and Hamilton was praised-up by Niki especially. I founds this odd at the time, strange. Now Hamilton has been able to make up ground and I cannot get my head around that Rosberg was disadvantaged more then he should have.

Conspiracy theories aside, @xoanon calls it "Convenient ", and I feel the same....

I hope that all the bad stuff ends right here and that they can fight this out on track.

"

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5. Posted by xoanon, 27/09/2014 9:49

"Convenient "

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6. Posted by Podge, 26/09/2014 21:41

"We've had our fair share of reliability dramas this season between the two main protagonists, and here we are 5 races from the end and we're back to being all but even. Wouldn't it be great if, from here on in, this was now decided on the track, head to head. I hope Merc iron out all the creases, but I'm not convinced they will. I've never seen a team veer so wildly from utterly spectacular to seemingly incompetent and back again so often."

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7. Posted by TheBucketOfTruth, 26/09/2014 21:17

"So whoever has access to the cars during parc ferme sabotaged Nico's car to bring the championship closer together? No, the powers that control F1 would never try to manipulate results to spice up the championship."

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8. Posted by Hardliner, 26/09/2014 20:55

"I LOVE watching Germans being defeated by efficiency issues, learning the same old 1945 lessons all over again...."

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9. Posted by Sir Jack Brabham, 26/09/2014 20:48

""Foreign substance"... Yeah, because Lewis pissed in his cockpit..."

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Rosberg Singapore retirement due to "contamination"

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