Analysis: McLaren in need of birthday win

McLaren and Raikkonen have yet to win since they finished last year as championship runners-up.

The Finn is now third overall and 27 points adrift of Renault's world champion Fernando Alonso after six races while McLaren, winners 10 times last year, are 36 behind Renault in the constructors' standings.

Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix would be the perfect place for Raikkonen or Colombian teammate Juan Pablo Montoya to break the blank and get back in the championship chase.

The team are celebrating their 40th anniversary this weekend, harking back to the day when founder Bruce McLaren raced his own M2B car in the 1966 Monaco Grand Prix.

It could happen. McLaren are the team with the best record over the years in the Mediterranean principality and Raikkonen won last year.

In Thursday practice, Montoya - winner in 2003 with Williams - was the fastest race driver.

"It seems that Ferrari and McLaren are both in good shape here and our main competitors will be them probably," recognised Alonso after practice.

Half Point

Another win for McLaren would be the 149th of their history after 602 races.

Since that May 22 debut 40 years ago, they have won 11 drivers' championships, eight constructors' crowns and triumphed three times in the Indianapolis 500.

They have had 122 pole positions, started 255 grands prix from the front row and been on the podium 387 times. They are also still the only team to have won all but one race in a single season (1988).

In typical McLaren fashion, ever meticulous to detail, the team calculated that they could have sprayed the equivalent of 1,161 litres of champagne over the years.

"You flip around in your mind, if you think slightly laterally, and you think what if you had to start as a new team, how fast could you achieve all those things?" said team boss Ron Dennis on Friday.

"You would have to win every year for 11 years and I thought how much would it cost? I sort of worked out rough figures and it was about three and a half billion pounds.

"Then you start to take it all in...we are the most successful team in the last 20 years. We've had better results than even Ferrari, although of course they are very prominent in people's minds."

McLaren won Monaco nine times in 10 years between 1984 and 1993 but the race that stands out for Dennis is one that did not go the full distance -- Frenchman Alain Prost's success in 1984.

"The race I remember here more than anything is the race in which we only scored half points because it was stopped and not restarted because of the rain," he said.

"That created the somewhat unique situation of a world championship being decided by half a point...it set the scene for the closest championship ever fought."