Button says he must return to winning

The world championship leader had no answer to Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber's upgraded RB5 at Silverstone, coming home in sixth place having struggled most of the weekend to get his tyres into their right operating window.

And with Red Bull's performance having opened up the title battle, Button is well aware that his team has to respond from the front - rather than think it can take things easy because of his lead in the championship points' standings.

"I lost three points to Rubens here, so I have got a 23 points lead to Rubens - which is still quite a lot to be fair," Button said as he reflected on the result of the British Grand Prix.

"Rubens is driving the same car as me, so I can try and keep him in check. Vettel is the one where you don't really know where their performance is going to be, so it is important for us to be fighting for wins.

"We cannot settle for third or fourth place. I need to be fighting for wins, and they are challengers. I had a 32 point lead coming here - and you can never be comfortable enough to think that we can just cruise home.

"They were very quick here, and I am sure they are going to be competitive at other races; I just don't think they will have the advantage that they had here."

Button is convinced that the mixture of the high-speed characteristics of Silverstone plus the cooler temperatures were the reasons why Red Bull's advantage looked so big.

"They were much quicker than us and it is because it is absolutely freezing this weekend," he said. "The sun did not come out until after the race which is nice - thanks British weather!

"So they have made a big improvement for sure Red Bull. They have got a lot of new parts on the car and they are obviously working for them. But there were other things that worked for them. This is a circuit that is very high speed, probably not our best part of the car.

"Also it is cold, and we cannot get the tyres in the working range, so we are losing out there. And when you go to hot circuits, we don't just get them working but Red Bull struggles with the tyre which helps us as well. And there is hardly any braking here.

"I don't know if you watched the last few laps when I was behind [Nico] Rosberg, but the braking on our car is the strongest point at the moment. We are stronger than the Red Bulls under braking, but there is no braking here. You never hit the pedal that hard here, and that is another reason why we cannot get tyre temperature.

"So there were lots of reasons why we were not competitive. I am not going to go away from here that disappointed. I've lost seven points to Vettel, which is disappointing, but then again I gained 10 points when he put it in the wall in Monaco.

"So, we could have come away with a worse result here. We finished up with three points. I know their package is good, but I am not upset. I know that it will turn around and there are lots of reasons why we were not on the pace that we can turn around at the Nurburgring."