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Lewis Hamilton said McLaren has no time to lose in making up the lost ground to Red Bull and Ferrari after finishing a distant fourth in the German Grand Prix.

From sixth on the grid, Hamilton gained two places with a strong opening lap, but could not live with the pace set by

the Ferrari’s and Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel, and spent the second half of the race shadowed by his team-mate Jenson Button.

“I did everything I could at the start, because I knew that that was the place where I could really make up some ground,” said Hamilton.

“Unfortunately, the guys in front were phenomenally quick, but I still managed to make up a couple of places.

“It was a very tough race today – the car didn’t feel fantastic and the Ferraris and Red Bulls were very fast.”

McLaren had high hopes that its new exhaust-blown diffuser would put it back in victory contention after losing the initiative to Red Bull in the past two grands prix, but instead the Woking squad has been leapfrogged by Ferrari.

And despite leaving Hockenheim with a slightly increased world championship lead, Hamilton admitted McLaren’s need for extra performance was now urgent.

“We hoped the gap would be closer in the race than it was in qualifying, and it was – but, even so, we’ve got to make up some pace on our main rivals,” he said. “We need to go back and figure out where we can improve, and pick it up again very quickly.

“Today, we did everything we could do – now we just have to work harder than ever to get ahead of the cars in front.”

Button fell behind Hamilton in the first-lap scramble and was unable to redress the balance during the rest of the afternoon.

But he used a long opening stint on the super-soft tyres to get ahead of Mark Webber and seal fifth place.

“My start was pretty good – I got away fantastically well off the line – but we got to turn one, and Sebastian [Vettel], who was fighting the Ferraris, braked pretty early and I nearly went into the back of him,” recounted Button.

“I had to take avoiding action and go wide; I hit the brakes, and soon as you do that in turn one, you lose a lot of time.

“So I lost three places, but thankfully I got one of those back pretty quickly.

“In the first stint, I looked after the tyres pretty well.

“I was at the back of the group, and it was a strategy that we’d planned before the race.

“After my stop, my pace relative to Lewis was very similar, and I settled in never less than two seconds behind him.

“But I couldn’t go any quicker because I was losing downforce [in his turbulence].