Development caught us out, says Dennis.

Ron Dennis blames the current pace of development for the problem that caused Kimi Raikkonen's smoky retirement in Monaco.

McLaren had a revised engine cover for the street race, which was rushed into service before going through as much on-track testing as would normally be the case. In Thursday Raikkonen suffered a fire when he ran slowly before and after a practice start on the grid at the end of the morning practice session.

Exactly the same problem occurred in the race after temperatures built up at a pit stop and he then had to run slowly behind the safety car. Ironically both fires took hold in more or less the same place on the circuit, but the slower pace behind the safety car meant in the race he abandoned ship after the hairpin, rather than after the tunnel, as in practice.

"We had a long period with the engine on high revs," said Dennis. "It heated the exhaust system up to high temperature, and then you go out behind the safety car, and you don't get enough airflow to cool off the exhaust.

"Of course these things we normally sort out in testing, but this is a new engine cover and new system in that area. Whilst we had a small problem in practice, we thought we'd resolved it. So we had a fire in the engine compartment that damaged the wiring loom.

"It's frustrating, but we had the pace. It wasn't bad luck. It was a reflection of our intensity of development."

Dennis insists that Raikkonen was on course to win the race, since he had more fuel in the car than Alonso, and would thus have gone a lot further before his second stop. The safety car meant that both men came in together, so even before the fire Kimi's only realistic chance of winning had been taken away.

"Juan Pablo did a good job, so he deserved to come second, but the race was really lost by the deployment of the safety car. Without the safety car it would have been a different matter. We had nine laps more fuel than Alonso, and I think we would comfortably won the race. That's life. You have to have everything perfect in F1.

"I'm delighted for Juan Pablo, but I would have much preferred to be first and third."

Dennis says that he expects the team to be competitive at Silverstone next week: "We were competitive and we had better strategy. We outmanoeuvred them. Of course we didn't win, but we are competitive, and we've got to take that competitiveness to Silverstone.

"But you're not shooting at a stationary target - everybody tries to develop their cars. Clearly here we had the ability to win, and it is of course frustrating and disappointing when you don't."