How a rubber tube could decide a title

However deep Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have to dig to outdo each other on track, there's one factor that neither can have any influence over in their title battle: Lady Luck's shining light.

You can argue all you want about there being no luck in motor racing - that diligence is the mother of good fortune - but in sport sometimes you simply get dealt a bad card.

Last weekend, in a fascinating moment of transparency, Mercedes-Benz engine chief Andy Cowell came clean about the misfortune that had wrecked Hamilton's victory chances a fortnight ago in Australia. He pulled from his pocket a small plastic bag that had inside it a spark plug and a small blue rubber tube, no bigger than your little finger.

He explained how this tube, which insulates the spark plug in the engine, had developed a miniscule fault on the inside where the two parts of the tube had been moulded together.

Over the course of the Melbourne weekend, this weakness had been attacked by the spark - so much so that on the formation lap a hole had burned completely through the rubber. This allowed the spark to short on the cylinder head, leaving Hamilton with a V5 on the formation lap and no chance of finishing the race.

A hole in a spark plug tube ruined Hamilton's chances in Australia © LAT

While a more robust design would have prevented the failure in the first place, it doesn't escape the fact that Hamilton had been tremendously unlucky to be hit with a case of Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives - anything that can go wrong will, and at the worst possible moment.

Just think about it. Of the 48 rubber drop tubes fitted to the Mercedes-powered cars in Australia, Hamilton's was the only one that suffered this issue. The problem had never been encountered on the dyno during all the years of the new turbo engines' development; and neither had there been an issue during the thousands of kilometres of track testing in Jerez and Bahrain.

Worse than that, though, was that it happened to fail just moments past the point of no return. Had it gone earlier in the weekend, even in qualifying, then it could have been replaced.

We must also consider that if Hamilton had not been forced to miss FP1 in Australia, due to a faulty sensor shutting his car down, then the problem may have come to light early enough in the weekend for it not to strike him on race day.

Rewind a bit further and we must remember that Mercedes had elected to replace the engine on Hamilton's car before the track action got underway, because it was worried about a fault in the unit he was originally going to use. So Lewis should never have had this one faulty tube in his car in the first place.

Hamilton remains true to his personal philosophy © LAT

"All things, even bad things, happen for a reason," said Hamilton afterwards. "Even if we don't like it and even if it's not good, there's always a reason for it happening. That is how I look at it. So I'm looking at the glass half full rather than half empty."

Maybe he's right to react like this. For while that rubber tube cost him a decent chunk of points in Australia, it also means he now has an engine that's done one race distance fewer than Rosberg.

With the strict limit of five engines this season, that mileage advantage could benefit him later in the campaign, meaning he can either use more power at a specific race to take a win, or he can be more flexible in saving up fresher engines for when they are needed most.

Let's also not forget that the unpopular double-points rule also favours those whose luck comes late in the campaign. For Hamilton, Australia may have felt like an unlucky break, but in the ebb and flow of a season it could yet prove to be the best thing that happened to him.

And neither he nor Rosberg will be able to do a thing about it.