McLaren Underestimated New Car Task, Says Newey

McLaren underestimated the difficulty of building their new Formula One car at the same time as racing the old one this season, technical director Adrian Newey said today.

The Mercedes-powered team have yet to race their 2003 car seven races into the season and began initial testing of it in the south of France only last week.

"Certainly for me it's been frustrating being this long in the birth, but I think we underestimated the difficulty of manufacturing while racing the existing car and the drain on resources that causes," Newey told a news conference at the Monaco Grand Prix.

"We hope it's worth the wait, I guess."

McLaren won the first two races of the season with the old car and Finland's Kimi Raikkonen remains the overall championship leader by two points from Ferrari's Michael Schumacher.

The German, winner of the last three races, has had a new Ferrari for the last two Grands Prix and was quoted this week as saying that he did not think the 2003 McLaren looked anything out of the ordinary.

"It depends what you call out of the ordinary, doesn't it?," replied Newey.

He said teething problems in testing, with only 27 laps completed over two days at Le Castellet, were down to a hydraulics problem and were not anything to worry about.

"It was a silly little problem that was easily sorted once we understood it," he said. "It was frustrating that we were right off the mark on that one but once we got running on the third day, we were able to start putting a few more laps in."