McLaren expects 'hard fought' races

Jonathan Neale believes it will be a tough battle with Red Bull and Ferrari for victories © Sutton Images

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McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale says he expects the next few races to be "hard fought" between McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari.

After Red Bull dominated the early part of the season, Fernando Alonso won for Ferrari at Silverstone before Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button gave McLaren back-to-back victories ahead of the mid-season break. Neale said that the timing of the wins was significant in boosting morale in the team during the enforced two-week shutdown, but that it was expecting a strong challenge from Red Bull and Ferrari when racing resumes in Belgium.

"It was a nice thing to do, it was like scoring a goal just before half time, so it gives everybody a lift and going in to the break you've not got that worrisome feeling on your mind," Neale told reporters during a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in. "I know in previous years - certainly one year in particular - we went to Hungary and found ourselves 1.7 seconds a lap off the pace, and let me tell you that is not a good way to go in to a shutdown!

"So I think while we can draw some comfort from it, and it was very pleasing for both drivers to get wins in both Germany and Hungary, we know we've still got a lot of work to do and I wouldn't want to suggest for a minute that there's any either complacency or unnecessary comfort at this end. The next few races are going to be hard fought. I think that certainly Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren all have cars that are capable of winning races, and we have to keep our focus and keep our momentum as we go through the next two low-downforce races as we look towards Singapore when we start to see some changes in the circuit characteristics."

Neale also said that he felt McLaren's latest two wins had come from the team doing a good job rather than a quicker car than Red Bull, but felt some points were lost in Hungary.

"I don't regard us as having the upper hand. I think we scored two well deserved victories. I argue that we should have been able to convert Lewis' and Jenson's positions in Hungary in to a one-two, so some disappointment there. So I don't think we have a dominant or a comfortable position by any means, we certainly not treating it like that and we're very much pushing very hard on our development program for MP4-26."

With Ferrari shifting focus to 2012, Neale said that McLaren was still looking to develop its current car in order to chase race victories.

"I still think there's a reasonable amount to do [developing the car]. Formula One is governed - and rightly so - by a resource restriction agreement, which all the teams are signed up to. That means that each team broadly has the same resources, and there's no way that anybody can, by regulation, either spend their way out of trouble or pile in a whole new load of resource that doesn't exist.

"So we have to make choices, and at some point we're all faced with the choice of 'what do we do in terms of next year's car versus of this year's car?' At the moment I think that we've got the balance right and we continue to develop the MP4-26. There are a series of upgrades planned for this next two races and a package for Singapore as well, and I think we'll just keep our eye on it. The most important thing for us as McLaren racing is to win races, and that's what we want to do."

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