Dennis: Ferrari did a better job

"Michael deserved to win, and we recognise that," he said. "We made it a little bit easier for him than we would have liked, but that's motor racing. We've had performance drops in the past and they're going to happen again in the future, as with all teams."

But despite the title race coming down to a last-gasp and ultimately unsuccessful attempt by Coulthard to keep his world championship hopes alive in Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix, Dennis conceded that defeat was an accumulation of events over the whole season.

"Overall it's not about this race, it's about all the races," he said. "They've done a better job. It was a well-earned World Championship. The important thing is to learn from your mistakes, but put them behind you and move forward, and to get the best out of the rest of the season and do the best preparation that we can do for 2002."

But despite admitting that Ferrari had done a better job, Dennis added that McLaren-Mercedes had still done the best job it was capable of.

"You should never be able to reflect and say you could have done a better job," he said. "That's the worst condition to be in, and I don't think we can try any harder than we tried. We're a pretty deep company, and we've got plenty of engineering and design capability, so I don't think we've lost any pace on any car.

"We'll try a bit harder maybe, and maybe [chief designer] Adrian [Newey] won't come to the last couple of Grands Prix or something like that, but other than that we want to win the remaining races and then try and raise our game for next season."

For the remaining four races, McLaren-Mercedes' realistic aim is to safeguard its second place in the constructors' championship and Coulthard's runner-up spot in the drivers' standings. Williams-BMW is only 13 points behind McLaren in the constructors' runner-up race, while Coulthard, Rubens Barrichello and Ralf Schumacher are covered by just seven points in the drivers' championship.