Kovalainen not giving up on '08 title

The McLaren driver has shown strong form this year with several good qualifying performances, but incidents and mechanical problems have left him 23 points adrift of teammate Lewis Hamilton in the points' table.

Despite the gap, however, Kovalainen is not ruling himself out of getting back in the title hunt.

When asked by autosport.com about his feelings on the championship situation, Kovalainen said: "It's not over, I'm not going to give up, that's for sure.

"We saw last year that a big gap, like Kimi (Raikkonen) had, he was able to fight back. In Formula One, you never know. I'll keep pushing the same as before and try and score as many points as possible. At the end, we'll see. At the moment, it doesn't look good."

He added: "Obviously it's difficult to come from behind, it's not easy because the cars are so reliable - people don't blow up at every race. You never know, a couple of bad races for the guys in front, a couple of good ones for me, it could look much better again.

"I'm staying optimistic and I'll keep pushing, keep focused, and not worrying too much about the points."

And Kovalainen was adamant that he was not being made to play a support role to Hamilton's title ambitions just yet.

"No, absolutely no instructions like that," he said. "I can do exactly the same as I did before, and that's exactly what I'll do. I will attack as much as I can. We will work as a team... I'm not planning to crash into him! He's not my number one target, and I don't want to take points off him, but I want to beat everyone on the grid."