by Rob Wilkins
Motorsport pundit Tony Jardine has predicted that McLaren-Mercedes should be back up there and challenging Ferrari for grand prix wins by the time the circus heads to Canada at the start of June.
Ron Dennis' team have been no match for the Scuderia in recent races and currently the Woking-based squad is third in the constructors' championship, 1 point behind
BMW Sauber and 13 points behind
Ferrari.
Lewis Hamilton is also on the back foot in the race for the drivers' title, with reigning champion
Kimi Raikkonen nine points in front of the Englishman.
Jardine believes though it is only a matter of time before Hamilton and
Heikki Kovalainen are back in the mix.
"I would say in the next two to three races to be honest," he told
Crash.net Radio at Cars International's 'Mille Miglia - Then and Now' evening in London this week.
"
McLaren are very good at updating their cars quite quickly, in terms of aerodynamics, suspension development and that is what I expect them to be doing. They are a team that is geared to react and make fast changes. I think they will be a little bit disappointed that they didn't do that a bit more in Bahrain and they certainly didn't do that in Spain. Third place was a good solid result - but that is all you can say and McLaren will have been disappointed with that result. They need to be challenging."
Asked about the season more generally, the
Sky Sports presenter added that he has enjoyed it so far and that it has been good to see BMW Sauber make so much progress.
"It started off in a very exciting fashion with Lewis hammering them all in Australia. But then we had our doubts because Albert Park is not a real, real test of the cars and aerodynamics. So by the time we got to Barcelona, Ferrari, who tested so well over the winter, were looking very, very strong. McLaren have just got to fight back now.
