McLaren: Alonso handling Hamilton pressure

That is the view of Alonso's McLaren team, who believe that the Spaniard is more than capable of bouncing back from another disappointing outing that has helped hand the world championship lead to Hamilton.

Alonso finished third at Barcelona after being forced wide at the first corner by Felipe Massa, while Hamilton was able to cruise to second place.

McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh said: "I think Fernando is doing a great job in the team. In measuring the influence he has on the team, you have to understand how he motivates and contributes to the team. And he is doing a really great job there.

"He is second in the world championship, so he is not doing a shabby job. By his own high standards he would like to be out in front at the moment, but I think he is doing a great job.

"He is an absolute competitor. He believes he can win the world championship and he will be out to beat Lewis and everyone else. That is what we would want and expect from him."

Despite taking a dominant victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix, Alonso has been beaten by Hamilton in the last two races. Those results have helped the young Briton emerge as the youngest ever world championship leader.

But Whitmarsh thinks it is far too early to believe that Hamilton is seizing the initiative in the title chase from his teammate.

"It is a fantastic championship with a lot of pressure on a lot of the front runners. There are four drivers going into each event with the expectation of trying to win, and I think that is a great thing for motor racing.

"That is pressure, but Fernando has demonstrated with two great world championship campaigns, once against us and once against Ferrari, that he can deal with pressure. So I don't detect any problem. He made a great start, he went for it but it didn't quite come off."

And Whitmarsh insists there will be no problem in keeping motivational levels high for both drivers.

"I don't think we have any difficulty to keep the motivation in this team," he explained. "Both of our drivers are extremely motivated. The team are massively motivated.

"We are leading both championships and I think there are a lot of other teams down here who need motivational programmes to a greater extent than us.

"We are here to win races. After this race we have to be pleased where we stand in the championship, with our drivers first and second and us leading the constructors'. But inevitably we are McLaren, so we are disappointed we didn't win the race."