As well as its good side, social media has its dark side, a place where the wise, or those easily offended, are best not to venture.

Shortly after the end of Q2 on Saturday, almost as soon as it became clear that Lewis Hamilton would play no further part in the session following a repeat of his Shanghai power unit issue, it began.

The initial questions as to how the Briton had been let down eventually turned to outright claims of sabotage, Mercedes finding itself accused of deliberately hampering Hamilton in favour of his teammate.

Toto Wolff was not impressed.

"I'm not going to respond to every lunatic that sends a message," he told Sky F1. "Some of them are abusing the team and abusing members of the team and I would never allow that.

"Number two, the last thing we would do is sabotage Hamilton," he continued, "he's a great friend to us. He's a lovely person within the team and we feel awful because he's not been able to perform the best and we are letting him down .

"We have moved heaven and earth to move parts overnight into Sochi. The engine guys started work at 2am, the chassis guys started at 5am. They are doing their utmost because Lewis is so important to us and we don't want this to happen. But I think we need to keep it in the normal world!"

Countryman Niki Lauda was a little more forthright in his reaction to the claims.

"That is bulls***," he told Sky F1 after the race.

"I hate this talk," he continued. There are a thousand people and they all try to do their best for both cars, otherwise we would never have gotten here. These mistakes we don't do on purpose. They are simple human mistakes that everyone can do and we have to take all the consequences to make sure it will not happen again, and that is what we are going to do."

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