After struggling to get on the ultimate pace throughout Friday practice at the Hungaroring, both Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button have accepted that the team are in for a damage limitation exercise at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Hamilton and Button remain clear of their rivals in the drivers standings, but in racent races their pace has tailed off, and Friday practice was dominated by Red Bull and Ferrari.
And Hamilton, who could only manage the 18th and 6th fastest times in the two Friday sessions, has reiterated the belief that the McLaren team are lagging behind their main title rivals.
He finished over 1.2 seconds off Vettel's pace in the afternoon session.
"We're massively down - almost a second - in the middle sector, and then a couple of tenths in the first and last sectors, I think the last sector's almost half a second [deficit]," Hamilton grimly explained after Friday's track time.
"We are pushing, and we're doing the best job we can. With the package we have, we're getting around the optimum from it. We're just trying to dial-in the set-up, but there's only maybe a couple of tenths in it.
"So we've got a lot of work to do and I guess this weekend's just about scoring as many points as we can and hoping that the guys ahead have troubles."
He added: "We'll just try and edge out as much as we can. I think being in the top five could be tricky this weekend."
As to the precise problem that the team was having, Hamilton admitted that there was nothing specific he could single out as the reason for their lost time.
"The car is the best I've ever had it around this track, and that's still not good enough," he muttered.
"It feels great around the corners, and then you start to push more to try and close the gap to these guys, and then the car starts to be really on the ragged edge. But I think it's just downforce."
Button backed up his team mate's pessimism after only managing the 4th and 9th quickest times in the two sessions.
"It's going to be very tricky," the reigning champion said mournfully, "The Red Bull is just so fast. They did a 1m20.0s. We didn't get near the low 1m21s.
"The car doesn't feel so good on the softer tyre. On the harder tyre, the car feels good. I don't know where that time is."
He explained that: "I feel reasonably happy with the balance of the car. There's still more to improve, but we're never going to find a second. We'll do the best that we can with what we have here.
"The guys are all working flat-out to improve this car, as we need to at the moment, and I've got belief in them. If we can get into the top five in qualifying, we should be very happy with that."
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