McLaren: Hamilton withdraws and disappointed, Button is satisfied in fourth

After his retirement at the F1 Singapore Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton declared that he will not only think from a world perspective in the next races. This is the second consecutive retirement for the McLaren driver, this time due to a contact with Mark Webber.

Now Hamilton has a gap of 20 points from the world leader Australian.

“There are still 4 races to go. I'm 20 points behind Mark, and it's a reasonable gap, but it's not insurmountable,” Hamilton said. “I guess I have to run with my head down and hope for the best. I won't just think about the title now, I will try to enjoy the rest of the season, come what may. But I will continue to fight until the end, because it's the only way I know."

The Englishman said he wasn't sure what happened with Webber, but defined it as a racing accident: "From my point of view I saw that he made a mistake while dealing with lapped cars, I was in the slipstream . I was on the outside at Turn 7 and he was in the blind zone, right behind me. I thought I had enough room to pass it. I braked, turned, and tried to leave room for him on the inside, then we touched, my tire went flat and it ended up there. But these are the races."

His teammate, Jenson Button, fourth today, said he was satisfied with the result although he is now 25 points behind Webber.

“It's a circuit where we knew we would be competitive, and probably one of the most difficult for us, so I'm going to Japan happy,” said Button. “We have good updates for Suzuka: we will have something that we tried to put on the car this weekend but didn't use for reliability reasons. Together with our planned upgrade for Suzuka, it should constitute an additional double weapon. My championship hopes were dampened a bit by Mark's third place ahead of me, but my gap is only one win. Everything is still to be played for, a wrong match can cost you many points” concluded Button.