Lewis Hamilton drove the wheels of his Mercedes on Sunday at Interlagos, undertaking a charge from the rear which yielded a fantastic run to fourth place.
The damage done on Saturday in qualifying left the new world champion with a tall order as he started his race from the pitlane.
Helped by the commotion at the start which brought out the Safety Car and put out a few cars, Hamilton just put his head down and ticked off his rivals left and right to put himself in contention for a podium finish.
"It felt like my karting days, starting from the back, particularly in my first year or two," he said after the race.
"On one side for sure I messed up yesterday and put myself in the worst position. I was quick enough to win the race from pole to the flag.
"I didn't do that so it made the job a lot harder today, but waking up this morning my goal was really just to try and redeem myself from yesterday's mistake, and really do the team proud and try and get the points back."
Hamilton made minced meat of Max Verstappen in the latter part of the race, then caught up with third place man with Kimi Raikkonen with just six laps to go.
But tyre degradation saw him struggle to keep up his blistering pace while the Ferrari driver upeld his slight advantage.
"I was trying to get back to third but I just ran out of tyres at the end," he added.
"But I enjoyed the race, I enjoyed the battle and hopefully that shows me and everyone that I still have a lot of fire in my heart.
Hamilton was obviously voted 'Driver of the Day' by F1's fans, but given a choice the Briton would have preferred not to have crashed in qualifying and work overtime to deserve the day's title.
"There's no room for mistakes when it comes to working towards perfection and wanting to be the best," said Hamilton.
"There's no room for mistakes but of course they happen, that's part of the growing process. But that's not what you work towards and I've had very clean year, no crashes and then damaged the car.
"As I said, yesterday is behind me, today has been a positive. To get back to fourth, I have to be very grateful and very happy with that for sure.
"A big thank you to all the fans that have voted for me, I hope they enjoyed the show. I gave it everything, I had nothing left in my heart or the car!"
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