Fernando Alonso has revealed his focus for the Japanese Grand Prix will simply be on beating Mercedes rather than keeping the Formula One world championship battle alive.
Alonso has effectively thrown in the towel on his hopes of catching Sebastian Vettel as the Spaniard goes into the race at Suzuka facing a 77-point mountain to climb.
Vettel will claim his fourth consecutive title if he wins his fifth successive race and Alonso is ninth or lower.
To add to Alonso's woes, the 32-year-old could only qualify eighth in his Ferrari, with Vettel second on the grid behind Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber.
As far as Alonso is concerned now, however, the target is to finish second in the drivers' championship, and Ferrari similarly in the constructors', with Mercedes just a point behind.
"If Sebastian doesn't win the championship here, he will win it in India or Abu Dhabi because the combination of results he will need will become less and less strange," said Alonso.
"But it's not the most important point of the weekend, trying to race to finish in the first eight to keep the championship alive.
"We will race to score as many points as possible, to finish ahead of Mercedes, which is a very important goal for us.
"If we can keep the championship going to India, that will be okay, but it doesn't change anything for us because all we want to do is score as many points as possible.
"We're second in the drivers' and constructors' championships, so the aim is to retain those positions."
Alonso has become so accustomed to struggling in qualifying these days - he has not been on the front two rows for the last 11 grands prix - he admits there is now "no emotion".
"What happened was more or less expected. We were between seventh and ninth all weekend in practice, so eighth is no surprise," Alonso said.
"It's not frustrating any more, to be honest. In Korea we were a second behind Red Bull, and fifth. We didn't have the pace.
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"In coming here five days later we didn't expect any miracle. We expected to be eight tenths (of a second) to a second behind, and we are eight tenths, so there is no surprise, no frustration.
"We are putting in maximum effort every weekend, we know some of the difficulties we have.
"But we also know our strong points, which are the starts, strategy, the lack of degradation, which we use to score points on a Sunday and has allowed us to be second in both championships.
"We'll have to use these strong points again, but on a Saturday there is zero frustration these days."
