Dennis wants return to low-fuel qualifying

"I'm very pleased and very proud," said Dennis. "Our strategists deserve a lot of the credit today, it was a tremendous call to come in after the parade lap, refuel and switch to one stop. It was a good call and of course we also then had the advantage of slick tyres.

"It was a bit disappointing being penalised for going 1.1 kph too fast (Raikkonen) in the first 10m of the pitlane. The penalty seems a bit severe, but that's the rule. The race was a credit to the organisation. The safety car worked for us and against us but it was a great race."

Dennis remains adamant that the regulations do need further attention and will be readying his points for the FIA's rules assessment meeting in April. In the meantime he was economical with his criticism.

"I keep saying, but very few people listen to me, that what you need is rule stability. That gives us the opportunity to catch up Ferrari and you've got much closer racing. I think that while qualifying has brought something to the spectacle it needs a bit of fine-tuning. I'd personally like to see Saturday qualifying as just that, running with qualifying fuel would give it a bit more meaning - I think most of the teams feel that.

"It's important not to resist change, we're more than happy to embrace everything, but hopefully we can improve the spectacle further by considering these sorts of changes."

But an understandably optimistic mood pervaded the McLaren garage after the Australian GP. The team goes to Malaysia with 16 points, seven more than Williams and 11 more than Ferrari. "Our new car, to be introduced in a few races time, should match even the new Ferrari," said a smiling Dennis. "In the meantime if we can get results like this we'll be delighted."