Hamilton: Retirement a big points blow

The erstwhile championship leader's McLaren had a gearbox failure while running fourth early on at the Hungaroring, and with Mark Webber winning the race, Hamilton is now four points behind the Australian in the standings.

"That's racing and we just have to work very hard to catch up," said Hamilton. "We've lost a lot of points today. That's the second time this year.

"Hopefully we can work very hard so in the next few races we don't have any problems.

"It doesn't help for sure, but there's nothing you can do. We always do a phenomenal job normally. It's a shame to have the fault here at this point of the year, but that's life.

"This is motorsport, when you're pushing the cars to the limit these things can happen. We just have to go away and try and learn from this."

Hamilton said the failure happened very suddenly.

"I literally was in Turn 1, was accelerating and had this weird vibration," he said. "It felt like the driveshaft went, but it was the gearbox."