Sebastian Vettel says Monza retirement changes nothing in F1 championship battle

The German suffered his second non-finish of the season due to an alternator failure, but even so he did not have the speed to finish on the podium.

That result dropped him to fourth in the world championship standings, and he is now 39 points behind points leader Fernando Alonso with seven races remaining.

Speaking about his title hopes Vettel said: "Nothing has changed. This was not a good result for us. We didn't finish, and it doesn't help if the others do.

"We need to improve the car. We could see the pace was not there, but we were in a good position to finish fourth or fifth, something like that."

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner sees no reason why Red Bull cannot recover , despite its deficit to Alonso and the fact that rival McLaren has now won three races on the trot.

"It makes the mountain higher but both the drivers are still in the championship race," claimed Horner. "We still lead the constructors' championship by 19 points and, with seven races to go, we have to make sure we throw everything at it.

"We should be more competitive hopefully in Singapore but, as we have seen in 2012, there are no guarantees."

Horner also hinted that Red Bull's performance in Monza was hindered by engine supplier Renault's power deficit.

"With the lap he [Vettel] did [in qualifying], it was absolutely everything there was," he said. "You only have to look at a data overlay to see where we haemorrhaged the time."

He also stressed that repeat failures like the alternator issue that struck Vettel again were unforgiveable during such a tight championship campaign.

"There is a lot of racing still to do and we are a strong team," he said. "We need to make sure that we don't have repeat failures. That is the most disappointing thing.

"If you have a failure, the most important thing is to learn from it, so a repeat failure is particularly disappointing."