Hurting Vettel not looking for positives after Suzuka retirement

Sebastian Vettel says he is not looking for any positives after retiring early from Sunday's Japanese Grand Prix and falling to 59 points behind Formula 1 title rival Lewis Hamilton, adding that the blow to his championship hopes "hurts".

Vettel pulled out with a spark plug issue that marked his second early retirement in four races, after the first-lap carnage of Singapore, as well as an engine issue preventing him qualifying in Malaysia. 

Asked about whether he still had any chance of the title - which is not quite mathematically wrapped up - Vettel said: "I don’t know. We still have a chance this year.

"Obviously it depends what happens today and in the next races. Obviously it’s not as much in our control as we’d like, but overall I think the team is on a good way. I think we are improving race by race, we’ve got a lot further than people thought."

After the disastrous qualifying in Malaysia last week, Vettel was seen shaking hands with his mechanics and he reportedly stayed in the garage with them late into the night, working on the car. Speaking about his team and the title-compromising reliability issues, Vettel said: "I think I need to protect them.

"We’ve done an incredible job so far, pity the last two races with reliability issues. But it’s like that sometimes, of course it hurts and we’re all disappointed but I think now we need to get back, get some rest and go flat-out for the last four races and see what happens."

However, the blow to his already slimming title chances seemed serious, as Vettel ended on it not being a day to talk of positives, despite some apparent progress.

"There’s also some positives, but for sure now we don’t look at positives, because it is not a day to look at positives," he said.