Hamilton not focusing on title anymore

The McLaren driver suffered his second retirement in two races after he made contact with Mark Webber when trying to overtake the Australian.

His retirement left him 20 points behind Webber with four races to go.

Hamilton admitted the gap to Webber was quite big, and said he will try to enjoy the rest of the races without looking at the standings.

"There are still four races to go. I'm 20 points behind Mark, and that's a reasonable gap, but it's not an insurmountable one," he said. "I guess I'll just have to keep my head down and hope for the best.

"I'm not going to think specifically about the world championship right now, I'm just going to try to enjoy the rest of the season - and whatever happens happens. But I'll keep fighting to the end, because it's the only way I know."

The British driver said he was unsure about what had happened with Webber, but believed it was a racing incident.

"I'm still not exactly sure what happened with Mark and me," said Hamilton. "But, telling it from my point of view, I saw that he'd made a mistake, and had got caught up with the backmarkers, so I was in position to slipstream him. I was on the outside going into Turn Seven, and he was in my blind-spot, just behind me.

"I thought I'd got sufficiently past him, though. I braked, turned in, and tried to leave enough room for him on the inside - and the next thing I knew I'd got clipped, my tyre was blown, and that was it. But, as the saying goes, I guess that's motor racing."

Team-mate Jenson Button, fourth today, was satisfied with the result, despite the gap to Webber increasing to 25 points.

"It's a circuit where we knew they'd be competitive, and probably one that was going to be difficult for us, so I go to Japan pretty happy," Button said.

"We've got a good upgrade for Suzuka: we'll have something that we tried to put on the car this weekend but couldn't - for reliability reasons. Coupled with our planned-for-Suzuka upgrade, it should hopefully be a bit of a double-whammy.

"My championship hopes were dented a little bit by Mark [Webber] finishing ahead of me, but the points gap to the front is just a race victory away. It shows there's still everything to play for - one bad race can cost you a lot of points."