McLaren intent on hitting straight back

Kimi Raikkonen suffered an engine failure while leading comfortably and David Coulthard spun off trying to pass Fernando Alonso in the closing stages.

"We had the fastest car but that makes it harder rather than easier," MD Martin Whitmarsh said at Nurburgring. "Kimi had the race totally under control and was in that confidence zone. We had a strategy that stopped him earlier than we had to for traffic, but that was safe. We had enough of a margin that we could adapt and are confident we would have won that one.

"Overall, we don't need to be too dramatic. It's a blow to our championship effort but we have a quick car and some good drivers and I think we have just got to battle on and see what happens in the remaining races. Williams are coming on strong but we had the pace of them this weekend and we'll just have to make sure that we overhaul them.

"The good news is that it's only one week to the next race. We could easily win that and we are going to France aiming to score maximum points. Both drivers have got to be consistent in qualifying. That's been an issue in our team this year but we don't need to tell them that. They'll push on."