McLaren's reality check

"We knew after Spa this was going to be a difficult race for us," said Whitmarsh. "We are looking forward to the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, but in the meanwhile seventh is okay. We won a race from tenth place two weeks ago so we've got to look at strategy.

"Rubens [Barrichello] was obviously very very quick. We will see how much fuel he has got on board tomorrow, but from second to eighth there is 0.2s so it is a very, very tight race. But we will see."

Monza is renowned as difficult place to overtake, but Whitmarsh is confident that with the right strategy, Raikkonen and Coulthard can fight for points.

"We have got two very good racers," he said, "we will see how they come through. We have got some good speed here. We knew this was going to be a difficult circuit, of course we are disappointed but we are going to see what we can do tomorrow."

What may help the team's chances is the weather. Rain has been forecast for the Monza region but Coulthard has his doubts: "We try and follow what is happening with the weather, but actually the forecast is moving towards having the rain during the night so we may have a wet start to the race but we think it will be a dry race."