McLaren confident of step forward

Both championship contenders have been pushing development hard in the past few weeks in their bid to establish themselves at the head of the field, but the rate of their progress will only be judged at next weekend's Spanish Grand Prix.

McLaren F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh said: "Our target going into every race is to win, and we have been working at a feverish pace across the McLaren Mercedes team since the Bahrain race to develop the MP4-22 to enable us to meet this target.

"It has been a busy period on and off track and we do feel that we have taken a step forward. We have to wait until we get to race day to fully understand the size of the step, as we are by no means alone in pushing performance."

World champion Fernando Alonso says he is approaching his home race in a positive frame of mind, despite his disappointing fifth placed finish last time out in Bahrain.

"The race in Bahrain was not great for me, but I have arrived in Spain leading the world championship and that is a good position to be in going into the European season," said the Spaniard.

"We had a strong test at this track earlier this week and we got to understand more about how the car performs at the Circuit de Catalunya and the changes to the layout."