Lewis Hamilton believes his World Championship hopes now depend on how well his McLaren team can respond to the continued strong form of Ferrari and Red Bull Racing.
Although Hamilton resurrected his championship aspirations with second place in Korea, his car did not have the pace to match his main title rivals. With the Briton effectively needing victory in the final two races of the season to capture the championship, he is urging McLaren to take the steps required to get him to the front of the field.
"We need to respond," said Hamilton after the Korean Grand Prix. "Clearly, we have been doing everything we can to catch up, and the guys are doing a great job. Hopefully, we can come away from this with great energy, take back the information from this weekend, find a couple of places where we are losing time and then see if we can improve coming into the next race. Then we can really attack."
Although he is 21 points behind title leader Fernando Alonso, Hamilton actually thinks he is in a good place going forward.
"Clearly, the pressure is on those guys," he said about Red Bull Racing and Ferrari. "We are in a strong position, Fernando is quite a bit ahead, and I could have done with those extra seven points [for winning] but I can still catch them up. 21 points is better than 28 so we will see.
"Korea was a great race, and very exciting. I love races like that. It didn't dry up fully but we made a good pit call, the team did a great job – but we are not quite enough at the moment. We are struggling with the car in high-speed corners, where it is bottoming a lot. But it is still possible for us to catch these up. I needed a good result like this."