Raikkonen's problems make Dennis 'numb'

Raikkonen will start from the back of the grid for today's season-opening race following a suspension failure that pitched him off the track on his first qualifying lap yesterday. It came after an electrical problem stopped the car during Friday practice.

Speaking on Sunday morning, Dennis insisted that he was hard pressed to explain how the problems had happened because his team had undertaken a huge ramp up of their quality-control systems following the reliability issues that cost Kimi Raikkonen the world title last year.

"We have never worked so hard in improving our internal systems and the processes by which we capture things that we see them in tests and follow them right the way back to a drawing," explained Dennis.

"The efforts to try and achieve bulletproof reliability is multiples more than we have ever done before because of the pain of last year, so to sit here trying to explain two problems on one car just makes me numb."

The electrical problem on Friday was caused by the failure of two wires in the McLaren's electronic control box. This led to a software glitch, which in turn resulted in a gearbox failure that stopped the car.

In changing the gearbox on the car the team chose to fit a new rear suspension assembly, which included a faulty wishbone that had not been bonded correctly.

Dennis explained that he was baffled about how the faulty part got to be fitted to the car, because the team test their suspension components to twice the force they experience in action to check they are strong enough. This part had also completed 2000km of testing without a problem.

"You just cannot get your mind around it when you see it," added Dennis. "You say, why us? You think it must be the motor racing god. But you have just got to get on with it and be more rigorous than we have been."