BMW adamant McLaren are not faster

The German squad were in the lead of the championship ahead of last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, dominated by Ferrari, who relegated BMW to second place with a commanding one-two finish.

BMW's Robert Kubica had to settle for fourth place in the Barcelona race, right behind McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.

Despite being beaten by McLaren in the race, Rampf is adamant the British squad and BMW are now equally competitive.

"Ferrari are still ahead of us and ahead of McLaren, and with McLaren we are very close," Rampf told autosport.com.

"In race one they were ahead of us, in race two slightly and in race three we were quicker and in race number four we are equal to McLaren.

"Now it is between the two teams to see who can make the next bigger step. To fight against Ferrari will be very difficult because they are a few tenths ahead. Two tenths is not enough."

Rampf admitted the team expected a podium finish in Spain - the fourth consecutive of the season - but claims their poor start cost them.

"We expected more from Robert," he said. "I thought we would achieve a podium with Robert with the performance we had in qualifying, and we knew the performance between us and McLaren would be very close.

"Here were are talking about one tenth more or less, and this is also what we saw during the race today.

"The race was decided more or less before the first corner, because we lost our position against Hamilton and throughout the race we had the same pace, we even had the same strategy by accident, and we were not close enough to jump him on a pitstop.

"Our pitstops were a bit quicker than his, by about half a second, and with a two second gap you don't make it."

He reckons, however, that BMW have finally gotten to the bottom of their problems with the starts and is confident they will be fine in time for Turkey.

"I think we are on top of it for the next race. If you compare the two starts. Robert had too much wheelspin. His initial start was okay but then he lost. Nick (Heidfeld) gained two positions because he had a good start, he just managed it. And it was fairly easy to gain position."