Hamilton: Title still within reach

The McLaren driver effectively needs to win the final two races of the campaign to give himself a decent shot of the title - but he sees no reason why he cannot deliver in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.

"In terms of the gap, 21 points seems a lot, but it is not actually as much as it has been in the past," said Hamilton. "Kimi [Raikkonen] showed in the past that anything is possible and with the way the racing is now anything can happen.

"Especially with the season changing all the time, you don't know what is going to happen in the race. You don't know if it is going to rain. The weather has been crazy this year, going up and down all the time, so those two together make it definitely possible."

Hamilton said McLaren had not brought any huge development upgrades to its car for Brazil, but he felt there was still plenty of performance potential to come from it.

"We haven't made any massive steps," he said. "I would love to say that I have half a second sitting in my pocket but I think that the guys have done everything and extracted everything out of the car with the resources we have and also with the time we have balancing this year's car and next year's car.

"Hopefully next year's car has way more potential than this year's car, but we come here with some improvements - actually in the last race we had some things that were not working properly on the car so hopefully this weekend we can sort those and hopefully they will work better."

Hamilton also thinks that the Interlagos and Abu Dhabi tracks would be a good stomping ground for McLaren.

"I feel they are two strong tracks in terms of my driving," he said. "In the past I have struggled to have the best car here but I feel this car is better suited to this track, and this track is not the highest of downforce levels, so it brings the others a lot closer to us. I think you will see a similar battle that you saw in the last race."

When asked if he still felt he was in the driving seat for the title, Hamilton said: "I am not in the drivers' seat because I am not leading the championship, so I am in the chasing seat.

"But I feel I am definitely in the driving seat in terms of how I move forward from here. There is only a certain amount I can do and obviously other things have to play to my benefit as well.

"I have had some tough experiences in the past and misfortune and I hope in the next two races it is a more fortunistic position to be in."