McLaren: no concerns about pace

Although McLaren had gone into the year as one of the favourites to be fighting for the championship, the Mercedes-powered team have yet to show the kind of pace they need to beat early pace-setters Renault and Ferrari.

That lack of form has led to hints of frustration from Raikkonen, who has been strongly linked with a move to Ferrari next season.

When asked after the European Grand Prix on Sunday whether he was happy to have scored points, the Finn said: "No. It's not what we want.

"The race was okay. We were ahead of everyone else, ahead of the rest of the field but we couldn't get quick enough to get on the podium. It wasn't far away. We were just too slow."

But Dennis believes the team are not as far from the front as their results have suggested - and claims they would have even challenged for victory at the Nurburgring if Raikkonen had not lost time early in the race behind Jenson Button.

"We are very close," said Dennis. "We got second fastest lap. We were a little bit stuck behind Jenson in the first stint and that lost us quite a lot of lap time. We couldn't quite close the gap, but we are not so far off the pace."

McLaren's F1 CEO Martin Whitmarsh believes that it is only a question of time before his team take their first win of the season.

"Ferrari are a good team and Michael is an outstanding driver. Great champions are like that, when they get a sniff of success, they can step up a gear or two," he said.

"I think Michael will score more wins probably, so will Alonso and I believe we will too. I think its very clear that, and if you look at Kimi the next car was over a minute behind, there are three teams fighting for this."

McLaren's rivals are certainly refusing to believe that the team will not be a factor in the world title fight - even though this season's victories have been shared between Renault and Ferrari.

Renault's director of engineer Pat Symonds said: "Don't write Kimi off. He wasn't far behind; they're still looking reasonably strong.

"It is more a Michael-Fernando battle, more a Renault-Ferrari battle, more a Michelin-Bridgestone battle... but there might be some others who come along to the party."