Sao Paulo: Lewis Hamilton says he does "not give a damn" about ruining the title hopes of any of his rivals as he seeks to conjure his own miracle on Sunday.
Shaking off Caipirinha-induced hangovers, Formula One's teams ran the gauntlet to Sao Paulo airport on Monday.
Warily eyeing up the shanty towns that line much of the route, and praying that any opportunistic gun-toting bandits were looking the other way, attention turned to the final leg of a marathon season.
The race in Abu Dhabi, whose five-star luxury and slight sense of sterility is about as far removed from Sao Paulo's sprawling sea of humanity as it is possible to get, could go any number of ways.
Trying to work out permutations did not help those with fuzzy heads on Monday. For Hamilton, at least, the requirement is simple. He must win. And even then the McLaren driver would require the three men ahead of him — Ferrari's Fernando Alonso and the Red Bull pair of Mark Webber and Sebastian Vettel — to trip up.
Hamilton, though, has made it clear that he will not be treading on any eggshells as he attempts to pull off an unlikely triumph..
"I don't give a damn about any of those three," he said. "At the end of the day, I am still in it so I will give it a shot. They have a lot more to lose than I have. I won't be looking up at them or letting them pass. I am going to Abu Dhabi to try to win. We don't have the fastest car but I could be riding in fourth and all three don't finish."
Hamilton did add that if the title proves beyond him he would like to see it go to Webber, saying that he admired the Australian's pluckiness in the face of Red Bull's apparent emotional support for Vettel.
"Mark has done a great job this year and he has been told by his team what position he is in," Hamilton said. "Against adversity he has kept at it. I want to see Mark win."
Webber's chances of doing so could well hinge on Vettel's co-operation. The young German, the bookies' favourite to win the race given recent form, could decide to pull out of the way and let Webber through if he decided he had no chance of winning the title himself.
Similar situation
It would be ironic were Alonso to lose the title to such antics, given the seven extra points he won at Hockenheim when Felipe Massa was ordered out of his way. But the situations are not as similar as they might appear.
Massa was an unwilling collaborator whereas Vettel would be making a conscious decision to sacrifice himself for the team. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he had "zero doubt" his drivers would do the right thing given the circumstances.
