Lewis Hamilton refuses to blame Mercedes over failure to win F1 title at US Grand Prix
The Brit's third place finish in Austin means he needs just five points to become world champion for the fifth time. A seventh place in Mexico City on Sunday will be enough to get the job done with two rounds to spare.
Hamilton's celebrations were put on hold after a strategy error by Mercedes, which saw him pit early, denied him a shot at victory in Texas.
The water pump on Hamilton's car was also replaced before the race after a leak had been identified on team-mate Valtteri Bottas' machinery. A set-up issue, when his vehicle was hastily put back together, also came to light after the dramatic race.
Hamilton said: "You saw that the car was in a million pieces on Sunday morning, so that was not ideal for the race. "If we didn't have a morning like that our race outcome would have potentially been different.
"We had another problem which cost us time and the issue I was having with the car was the biggest outlier. Given I had this deficit I was having to push that much harder to recover the time I lost.
Hamilton has asked to be kept in the loop of Mercedes' analysis by his race engineer, Pete Bonnington, before he heads south of the border.
He said: "I will get an email update from Bono and then we will sit down on Thursday in Mexico and go through it all. "No one is to blame.
We take the blame together and we give ourselves a kick up the backside and realise that we have got to keep working and keep pushing.
We will come back stronger." Despite his troubles in a thrilling race won by Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen at the Circuit of the Americas, Hamilton remains firmly in the box seat with rival Sebastian Vettel all but giving up the ghost.
Mexico City was also the venue of his fourth title triumph last term and Hamilton added: "I honestly didn't have any care about winning the world championship in America.
"There were a lot of questions about it, but I hadn't given it a single thought. "I was here solely to win, and my goal was to win these last four races of the season.
"There were a lot of things that went against us. For me, there are frustrations because I want to win the title for the team.
"Collectively, we have lost some performance to Ferrari, but we think we know where that performance is, and we still have three races to go.".
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