By Jonathan Noble Saturday, April 26th 2008, 18:19 GMT
Ron Dennis in BarcelonaRon Dennis has downplayed the significance of his McLaren team being outqualified by Renault and BMW Sauber at the Spanish Grand Prix, insisting the true picture of his outfit's performance will only become clear in the race.
McLaren had gone into this season as the expected main rivals to Ferrari for the world championship. But despite dominating the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, they have since failed to seriously challenge their rivals with BMW Sauber emerging as Ferrari's main threat.
But although disappointed that Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen could manage no better than fifth and sixth on the grid in Barcelona - behind the two Ferraris, Fernando Alonso and Robert Kubica ? Dennis thinks it is too early to judge the relative strengths of the teams at the front.
"I think it's a bit premature to say who is the quickest and who is the slowest at the moment," said Dennis on Saturday afternoon, well aware that Hamilton was only just more than two tenths of a second slower than pole position man Kimi Raikkonen.
"You know very well that the regulatory change that sees us not able to put fuel back in and having to basically qualify and run what we've got left...requires a great deal of thought about what your fuel level is.
"So, when you look at the closeness of the grid and you turn that into how many laps of fuel that represents, you don't have to have that much of a different strategy to be where we are on the grid. Only tomorrow we will know.
"So it is a little early to say whether the pecking order has changed. But one thing is for sure - which is that everyone, I think, has gotten closer together. And that means better racing. And good racing is what we need for Formula One. That's what it is all about. We're not spending enough time talking about the racing."
Dennis's feelings about the competitiveness of the teams at the front were echoed by his drivers, who believe there was little reason to be too downcast by their performance so far in Spain.
Heikki Kovalainen said: "Clearly we are not satisfied with fifth and sixth position. Not myself, not Lewis and not anyone else in the team. But it's incredibly close here, and improving by just a small amount would put you in a very different position.
"So we should not give up, and we definitely won't give up. We'll keep fighting. We just don't know about the strategies and how it's going to work tomorrow. We've just got to go flat out and anything is possible. So that's my view at the moment."
Hamilton added: "Yeah, I agree. Obviously we'd have hoped to be a little bit further up, but I think generally our pace was quite good throughout qualifying, and I feel that we've got a very good strategy for tomorrow.
"But it would have been a bit better if we'd been a bit further ahead. As Heikki said, we're not going to give up, tomorrow should still be a good race, and we don't know what the people in front are up to. So fingers crossed that we'll have a good race."
