McLaren aim to convince Raikkonen to stay

Raikkonen had gone into the year hoping that McLaren had got over the reliability issues that wrecked his 2005 title charge, but history appeared to repeat itself when he suffered an electrical problem on Friday and then a spectacular suspension failure in qualifying.

Despite those issues, however, Whitmarsh believes that Raikkonen has already seen the potential on offer from the MP4-21 - especially with his charge to third place in the race.

Whitmarsh has made no secret of the fact that McLaren want to convince Raikkonen to stay on board as Fernando Alonso's future teammate - and producing a winning-car will be crucial in their hopes of doing that.

"Regardless of Kimi, our primary motivation is to win a world championship," he added. "That is what we're here to do, and you need a reliable car and a quick car to do that.

"Kimi and his management will do what they feel is right for them. I think we have made no particular secret of the fact that we want Kimi to stay with us. We have got one world champion in the car next year and it would be nice to have a second one with Kimi taking the title and being in the car alongside Fernando.

"We would be very happy with that, but at the same time you cannot do anything about that. You can only go out and win races. It doesn't add any extra pressure or impetus to the programme. The reality is that we have got a strong technical organisation.

"The whole team are working hard and for our own egos and motivation we are bitterly disappointed when we let ourselves down like with what happened in qualifying here."