Analysis: McLaren Must Win or be Left Behind

Mika Hakkinen timed his departure well: such a conclusion is hard to avoid, after the first four races of a Formula One season dominated by Ferrari's Michael Schumacher and his Williams rivals.

While the German is firmly in the driving seat for a record-equalling fifth title, Hakkinen is well into a year's sabbatical from McLaren. The Finn, who could well decide to make his break permanent, has not attended any races yet this year but he cannot have seen much on television to make him envious of former teammate David Coulthard.

Indeed, he could well draw the conclusion that he has saved himself a load of frustration as McLaren still look to take their points tally into double figures with effectively a quarter of the season gone.

Hakkinen, twice World Champion with McLaren, struggled for motivation last year while Schumacher's Ferrari smashed record after record. By the time the Spanish Grand Prix came along, the Finn had scored just four points compared to teammate Coulthard's 26.

The same Circuit de Catalunya that greets the Formula One circus this weekend provided the cruellest cut of all, with Hakkinen's clutch exploding with five bends remaining between him and victory. Coulthard earlier stalled on the grid and was accused by team boss Ron Dennis of 'brain fade' before the new electronic software was found to be faulty.

On Sunday, Coulthard will start as McLaren's leading driver - at a circuit that should favour him - with a mere five points on the board and nothing at all from the first two races.

McLaren have taken just nine points in all, only one more than Jenson Button has scored for Renault, and Schumacher seems mentally to have crossed them off his danger list. "They'll probably have to write it off," one German newspaper quoted Schumacher as saying at the weekend, when asked about McLaren's chances of the title.

The team, as boss Ron Dennis recognised at Imola a week ago, are going through a bad patch, with Ferrari and Williams accelerating away from the rest.

"You are seeing us go through a difficult period of uncompetitiveness," he said. "You don't find and lose competitiveness quickly in Formula One, so it may not be the next race or the one after that or the one after that but we will emerge.

"Are we an uncompetitive team? No. Do we have an uncompetitive car at the moment? Yes."

The team have been through such patches before, notably in 2000 when they failed to score any points in the first two races, but you have to go back to 1996 to find a start as poor as this after four races. That year McLaren ended up fourth overall.

Lapped

Imola represented the most embarrassing moment so far this year for the team, with Coulthard lapped by Schumacher's F2002.

The Mercedes Ilmor engine has taken its share of the blame and McLaren have said in the past that the banning of the metal beryllium for use in Formula One V10s at the end of 2000 represented a setback.

Technical director Adrian Newey said this year that the 2001 engine had no more power than in 1998 and although Mercedes have developed a new one since, the car has struggled to match Williams-BMW and Ferrari.

Reliability has also been an issue once again, with Coulthard halted in Australia with gearbox problems and both cars retiring in Malaysia with engine failures. Young Finn Kimi Raikkonen went out with a wheel hub failure in Brazil and was called in for safety reasons at Imola, after the data showed a cracked exhaust was dangerously overheating the rear suspension.

"We are too slow and everybody in the team knows that we have to improve and work even harder," said Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug afterwards.

McLaren switched from Bridgestone tyres to Michelin this season and that, according to Williams technical director Patrick Head whose team are now in their second season with the French manufacturer, may be another factor.

"I think probably McLaren are still learning how to use the tyres," he said. "Certainly the Michelin tyres when they are in their right window are extremely good but their window is relatively narrow because of the fact that they grain so badly in their first 10 laps. It means you spend an awful lot of the practice scrubbing them and maybe these days you can't afford to waste that much time on the track during practice."

The drivers, meanwhile, are doing their best. "We have to face reality and keep working," said Coulthard in Imola. "Things aren't as bad as they look today but equally they may only be as good as they looked when I finished third in Brazil."