Kovalainen says confidence still intact

The Finn, joining the British squad from Renault, has scored 20 points in the first eight races of the season, 18 less than teammate Lewis Hamilton, who has been on the podium four times, including two victories.

Kovalainen has climbed onto the podium just once thanks to a third place in the second race of the season in Malaysia.

But the McLaren driver says he has not lost any confidence in his abilities, and he reckons he will be able to score better results when he manages to a enjoy a trouble-free weekend.

"I don't feel that my confidence has been dropping because of these problems," Kovalainen told autosport.com during testing at Silverstone.

"I've had some difficult races but generally I had very strong qualifying sessions and then I've had some technical problems or the crash in Barcelona.

"I have not been able to put the race together. In Magny-Cours it was the opposite. In qualifying we had the penalty, but on Sunday the car felt very strong.

"So I don't think it has made a big difference for the confidence level. Of course everybody in the team is looking to get a strong result and we can try to improve, and to put the whole weekend together and get even better results."

Kovalainen had a strong race in France last weekend, recovering from a grid penalty to finish in fourth place, right behind Toyota's Jarno Trulli.

Both the Finn and Hamilton had to serve penalties in France, but Kovalainen rejected suggestions that McLaren have been targeted by the FIA.

"I don't think it's too many penalties," he said. "We get a penalty whenever we do something wrong.

"And I don't think we should read into it too much. We need to make sure we don't make mistakes and then we won't receive any penalties. I don't think there are more penalties for McLaren than for others.

"I think we have made some mistakes, I have made some mistakes and we need to make sure we won't do them again, and then it will be fine."

And the McLaren driver is confident his team will be in strong form in next week's British Grand Prix, despite Ferrari looking like favourites after their dominant display in Magny-Cours.

"I'm quite happy with the pace of the car, and the feeling is that the car is strong," he added. "Of course in testing it's difficult to say what the other teams are doing, but Ferrari are going to be strong here as well for sure.

"But it's something we don't need to worry about too much. We will try to improve our car, our package, and I'm sure we will be competitive. I just don't know what the other teams will do."