McLaren not disheartened by 2011

McLaren has been second-best to Red Bull this season © Sutton Images

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McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale says that the team has not been disheartened by its failure to further challenge Red Bull this season.

Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton have won two races each but Sebastian Vettel's eight victories mean he can secure a second consecutive world championship this weekend in Singapore. With missed opportunities to win the races in Spa and Monza, Neale admits there have been a number of 'if only' moments, but told reporters during a Vodafone McLaren Mercedes phone-in that it was still fully determined to try and win as many races as possible this year.

"We sit here having amassed a number of race wins and championships and I think put up at times a very credible fight and we will continue to do that until the end of the season," Neale said. "Of course we'd like to be where Sebastian Vettel is at the moment, and hats off to Adrian (Newey) and the team in terms of not only the raw pace in the car but the consistency that they've found this year. Obviously we look to ourselves to do a better job; we're not satisfied with coming runners-up, and we look very much to the next six races ahead to continue winning races.

"We have strength in the team, we've made some changes internally, but Formula One is about innovation and slick execution. It is true that you have to be good everywhere, I think there are lots of teams - and ourselves included - who would look back at either operational issues, reliability issues or racing incidents and think 'if only'. That's the nature of the sport, you have to roll with that, I think that's the same every year. But no certainly we're not in any way disheartened, downbeat or anything other than determined to win races between now and the end of next year, and determined to start the season next year that's quick and reliable from the outset."

Without completely admitting defeat to Vettel and Red Bull, Neale did say the focus was more on individual race victories than the championship as the team started to look towards 2012.

"I'm pretty sure that Red Bull would be bitterly disappointed if they didn't win the championship given the advantage they have at the moment. [But] we're looking at six more races and six more opportunities to win. Winning is why we are here - races as well as championships - and it's too early for us to bail out completely.

"Of course the emphasis in the team is starting to move out of necessity. With a long race season that goes until the end of November it is just not possible to put 100% of your resource on to the program for this year without doing something for next year, but we have well proven processes inside the organisation that allow us to move resource to next year."

Despite confirming that the emphasis on car development was shifting to next season, Neale said that the stability in the rules meant there was a lot of crossover between the current car and the MP4-27.

"It's also possible - and I'm sure that despite the fact that our colleagues at Ferrari say that they've stopped developing this year's car - they will know, as do we, that much of the development that we can do on this year's car is carry over knowhow for next year. It's an evolutionary set of rules and if you look at various aspects of the car and, rather than treat it as a product, look at it as a continuous research and development program then it's still very possible to get performance on this year's car and generate knowhow for next year. Those are the areas we're focusing on now so there'll be no lift at this end."

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