McLaren taking nothing for granted

Lewis Hamilton is taking a seven-points lead in the championship table into next weekend's race in Sao Paolo, which means he only needs to finish fifth to guarantee himself the crown.

However, well aware about how the team tripped up last year, no one at McLaren is taking anything for granted about their chances for the race. And Dennis has said that the team will simply prepare as well as they can before the cars leave for Brazil, and then worry about their strategy and decide just how cautious they need to be when they get there.

Speaking about the different mood at the team compared to last season, Dennis said: "We don't even remember what happened in Brazil last year. If you want to make comparisons we left China (in 2007) having not won the race, this year we're leaving having won the race, so it can swing around all over the place.

"It's clearly not done, but most likely it's only unreliability that's going to cause us a problem. So we're going to be cautious about tyres, rain all sorts of things. But there's nothing to be achieved before Friday in planning for the what ifs.

"All the work we normally do will be done, and we will arrive on Friday morning ready to go and we'll adapt to whatever gets thrown at us."

McLaren's victory in Shanghai has made them clear favourites to take the crown in Brazil, with further developments to the MP4-23 being considered for introduction at Interlagos.

But as well as the strengths their car package has shown this season, Dennis also believes that Hamilton has shown himself much better prepared for the finale than he was this time last year.

"You never stop learning," he said. "It's so easy to forget that that was his first season and it was a phenomenal season. Why shouldn't this one be better? Is he going to get better? Yes, he is

"When you consider the first year performance of all the great drivers, they never came close to his first year performance. When you look at the second year performance of all the great drivers, none of them, as far as I know, had the sort of performance that he has now. He is still getting better. He will continue to get better through the rest of his career."