Irvine will not win championship

The Austrian, who retired in 1997, believes Mika Hakkinen will win his second successive title - as long as his McLaren-Mercedes is not hampered by reliability problems.

Berger said the spice had been taken out of the title battle following Michael Schumacher's crash at Silverstone, which left the German nursing a broken leg.

'The championship is a little bit odd without Michael,' Berger commented.

'He was always the pepper in the soup. Hakkinen is going to have to be careful to keep focused and keep luck on his side, but at the end of the day he will be world champion. I don't see anybody giving him a really hard time.

'Irvine does not have the capacity to do it. He and David Coulthard [Hakkinen's McLaren team-mate] are in a lower league. If everything goes all right, Hakkinen will get the championship much easier without Schumacher.'

Irvine is second equal with Schumacher, eight points behind championship leader Hakkinen.

He is six points ahead of Jordan's Heinz-Harald Frentzen and 10 ahead of Coulthard.

Irvine believes that he will be buoyed by the fact that Ferrari is now behind him rather than Schumacher, even though his future with the Maranello team is still undecided.

Irvine met with Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo last week to discuss his future with the team and its strategy for the rest of the season.

Irvine said, 'It's almost lucky that Michael hurt himself this year when I'm so close to the top of the table. I admit it is not exactly the way I wanted it to come about.

'Winning the world championship is something I have always wanted to achieve.

'It's my best season at Maranello and it's the best Ferrari I've ever driven. Nothing has been lost yet. If everything goes well, I could win the title.'