Nico Rosberg says a run of reliability issues have “derailed” his title hopes in the last few months of the season.

– Sochi: Hamilton wins Russian Grand Prix
– F1: Mercedes upped their game again in Russia

Having pushed Lewis Hamilton to the final race of 2014, Rosberg has struggled to match the results of last season but was within a race win of Hamilton during the summer break. However, retirements in Italy and Russia due to reliability problems have seen Rosberg slip to third in the standings, 73 points behind Hamilton with 100 still available.

Asked if he will be more hungry in 2016 after the disappointing manner in which his title challenge has faded, Rosberg replied: “It doesn’t change.

“It’s disappointing to see how this year hasn’t gone… a lot of bad luck in the last couple of months just when I needed to launch an attack, one thing after another. Small things also, major things, race stoppers just derailed it in the last months and that has been tough.”

And Rosberg admits he is surprised to see Mercedes have so many issues having enjoyed better reliability during the first part of the year.

“It’s a strange one. Just when we were looking so good on reliability to then have a few issues. It is surprising and is has gotten worse through the season. The last couple of months we have had more issues and race stoppers, so we must look into it again and continue to improve in that area because it seems we haven’t made as big steps as we thought.”