McLaren's Martin Whitmarsh hopes Hockenheim upgrades will turn team's form around this weekend

Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button struggled for competitiveness at Silverstone last time out, having scored just four points in the race prior to that in Valencia.

The team will have several new updates for this weekend's event at Hockenheim, including new sidepods that will make the car look different.

"The sidepods from the front to rear are quite different so you'll notice those," Whitmarsh said during a Vodafone phone-in. "There are other bits and pieces that the sharper eyes will see and clearly there are some parts that are transparent to the naked eye so that is the main area of modification and it's reasonably noticeable."

Whitmarsh admitted managing this year's tyres properly is proving to be a "substantial challenge" for his McLaren team and its rivals.

But the Briton reckons the last two races, where the team struggled for pace, were simply "unusual", and hopes things will get back to normal at Hockenheim.

"Formula 1 changes very quickly and your fortunes can change from being very strong in Canada, which we clearly were, to a disappointing couple of last races,"

"I think they were unusual. Silverstone was an unusual weekend. But our thrust is always to be developing the car, we've got quite a lot of new components and some quite noticeable ones on the car that we will have in Germany.

"For everyone, not just McLaren, trying to understand and exploit the tyres correctly is proving quite a substantial challenge, so I think keeping ourselves focused, seeking to eliminate mistakes, improving the performance of the car, understanding the tyres, seeing if we can exploit them better are all top of our to do list."