Briatore Happy to Lose to Avoid Boredom

"We've won five out of the seven races this season, but you can't win every time and the important thing is to be competitive," the Italian told a news conference in Madrid on Monday.

"If we won all the time, we'd be as unpopular as Ferrari and we want to avoid that. We enjoy being a team that everyone likes."

Giancarlo Fisichella took the honours in the season-opener in Australia and Spain's Fernando Alonso has won four of the subsequent six races to lead the World Championship ahead of McLaren's Kimi Raikkonen.

Ferrari driver and six-times World Champion Michael Schumacher is in an unaccustomed eighth position in the standings, 43 points behind Alonso.

"I thought Ferrari would be more competitive this season," said Briatore. "McLaren's performances have not come as a surprise because they worked very hard in the winter."

Although delighted with his team's performance so far this season, the flamboyant Italian voiced his concern that tyres were playing too important a role in this year's title race.

"The sport is becoming more of a tyre Championship rather than a car one. There are two tyre manufacturers in the sport but it would be far more logical if there was just one.

"We have tested the tyres for some 40,000 km and we still can't predict everything that will happen and you only have to look what happened to Raikkonen at Nurburgring."

The Finn spun off on the final lap while leading last month's European Grand Prix when his suspension shattered after his tyres wore out.

Alonso had tyre problems of his own in the previous race at Monaco when he finished fourth as Raikkonen ran away with his second race in a row for McLaren.