McLaren adamant they can catch Ferrari

The Italian squad said after Felipe Massa scored his second consecutive win that they are happy with their current pace, but that they will focus on improving their reliability, which has not been perfect this year.

The Maranello outfit have seen their world championship challenge suffer due to failures for both Massa and Kimi Raikkonen in the first four races of the campaign.

Massa stopped with a gearbox problem in qualifying for Australia, while Raikkonen retired early in last weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

The most recent problem, which saw Raikkonen forced out with an alternator issue, resulted in the team admitting that their focus was now on making their F2007 bulletproof.

Such a tactic would be obvious with the car having outpaced rivals McLaren in three of the first four races.

But McLaren are adamant that they are not that far behind Ferrari in terms of pace - and think that Massa's advantage at the Circuit de Catalunya was flattered by poor mid-stint tyre strategies with both Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.

McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh said: "The middle sector (of the race) we didn't quite get right because we had Fernando on the wrong tyres, and had Lewis on the wrong tyre pressures.

"At that time we were running seven more laps of fuel, which is 0.6 to 0.7 seconds per lap of weight penalty during that phase of the race. So while Massa did a great job, we were quick in the first section, and in the last section Alonso was quickest of all. We just didn't get it right in that critical middle section of the race."

Whitmarsh's conviction that McLaren did not show their true pace in Spain means he is in no doubt that his team can overhaul Ferrari swiftly - especially if the team do not keep pushing hard on improving their car.

"We are now developing by 0.2 seconds every race, and the difference between ourselves and Ferrari is less than that.

"So you only have to cough and splutter and not deliver that 0.2 second improvement from one race to another and you are left behind.

"I think you will see Ferrari and ourselves pull a greater lead on the other teams as we race for this championship. To us, as a team, that is what we are here for."