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Dennis: McLaren Should have Won Easily

McLaren boss Ron Dennis believes that Kimi Raikkonen would easily have won the French Grand Prix had he not been forced to take a 10-place grid penalty for an engine change in practice

Raikkonen stormed through from 13th on the grid to take second place to Fernando Alonso, with the race winner having been able to open up a decisive gap in the early stages of the race while Jarno Trulli held up his closest challengers. 

Speaking straight after the race, Dennis was clearly disappointed with the missed opportunity but was not going to let it detract from his focus on next weekend's British Grand Prix.

"It was a great race, but of course we're here to win," the McLaren chief told RAI. "So what is clear is that we have a lot of pace, and what we have to do is take  encouragement from our speed and take it to the next races and try to win.

"Every time you have any problem in any practice or you have a problem in the previous race, it's such a handicap in qualifying. This was a race we should have won easily."

Dennis also claimed that tyre supplier Michelin almost did too good a job for the French Grand Prix - because McLaren were not able to exploit the fact that their car is better on tyres than many of their rivals.

"They [the Michelin tyres] were sensational, I mean, almost too good really," he explained. "We like to enjoy the benefit of the car's performance. Normally some of the other cars start to struggle on their tyres towards the end of the race, and certainly it didn't happen here."

When asked whether he believed that McLaren still had a chance of beating Renault to the World Championship this year, Dennis said: "We'll just focus on the British Grand Prix and get a strong result there. That's our first target."

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