Lewis Hamilton caused a stir at Suzuka on Thursday, with sections of the British press accusing him of disrespect.
Throughout the official FIA press conference, the world champion gave short and evasive answers while playing with his phone.
When asked what he was doing, the Mercedes driver answered: "Huh?
"It's quite funny, just some [Snapchat] Snaps of us drivers."
On Snapchat, Hamilton had captioned some of those 'snaps' with: "This shit is killing me."
Hamilton explained: "Hey man, we've been doing this a long, long time and it's the same each time so got to keep adding new things to it."
While Hamilton may be feeling distracted after his engine travails of Malaysia, but his teammate Nico Rosberg on Friday insisted he is not worried.
"I've learned not to spend energy on things I can't influence," said the German.
"I have every confidence in Mercedes that they will do everything humanly possible to prevent the same thing happening. And some changes are already being implemented this weekend.
"We just need to be a little more careful this weekend - but I'm not talking about earth-shattering changes," Rosberg added.
As for the apparently distracted Hamilton, Rosberg answered: "I've known Lewis long enough to know that he recovers from setbacks and will be as difficult as ever to beat here."
Rosberg enjoys a 23-point lead over Hamilton going into this weekend's Japanese Grand Prix.
