The
McLaren team is apparently resigned to the fact that
Lewis Hamilton will not be able to overcome the penalty imposed on him ahead of the French Grand Prix, and hinted that it could put its weight behind team-mate
Heikki Kovalainen in an attempt to prevent
Ferrari and
BMW Sauber from stealing too great a march on the Briton.
Hamilton was slapped with a ten-place grid penalty for collecting title rival
Kimi Raikkonen in the pit-lane during the Canadian Grand Prix at the weekend and, even if he posts a pole-winning time at Magny-Cours, will have to start from at least the outside of row five. Even if McLaren produces a world-beating set-up for the French round, it has all but admitted that the Briton will not be a contender for victory.
Kovalainen, meanwhile, endured one of his toughest races as a McLaren driver in Montreal, but retains the backing of the Woking team for performances the potential of which may not have been obvious to the naked eye.
"The reality is that, in every race he's done for us so far, Heikki has done a fantastic job," team CEO Martin Whitmarsh insisted, "If you look at fuel-corrected times, he's frequently out-qualified Lewis but, this weekend, for whatever reason, he didn't quite get on it.
"We know he puts a lot of pressure on himself but, as a team, we very much believe in him and think he's robust enough in his approach that he'll recover in time. In reality, he's the guy who is our best hope of winning the French Grand Prix."
After qualifying only seventh on the grid for the Canadian race, Kovalainen struggled with tyre wear problems throughout the 70 laps and dropped to ninth at the finish.
"This weekend didn't quite come together for him," Whitmarsh admitted, "Maybe it was the way we set the car up, or the pressure he put himself under, but he was graining tyres and was not really able to get the job done in the race. As often happens when you don't quite find the sweet-spot, you can push the tyres into graining - and that's what happened towards the end of the race."
