Dennis believes F2002 beatable

Ron Dennis praised the performance of Michael Schumacher in the Brazilian Grand Prix but believes the F2002 is beatable. Although the McLaren boss thinks Ferrari deserved to win, he said the team were not as dominant as many predicted they would be with the new chassis.

"It was a pretty impressive performance really by Michael, but at least they didn't have the level of dominance that was anticipated from the new car," commented Dennis. "I think it is beatable. Some people are portraying it as unbeatable, but time will tell and I think both Williams and ourselves know that there is more to come and three or four races from now I think we will be a lot stronger."

"We are here to win, but it is tough. Until you are winning races everybody can say that the team is uncompetitive and that is the way it should be. It is a step in the right direction but we weren't that uncompetitive in Malaysia."

McLaren drivers David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen were beaten off the start line by the Renaults: Coulthard managed to take Jenson Button but remained behind Jarno Trulli until the Italian had a pit stop. Raikkonen was behind Button for many laps before managing to overtake the Englishman but failed to finish after a wheel hub failure sent him into the gravel. Coulthard finished third to score his first points of the season but Dennis thinks the race would have been better had the Renaults not held the team up.

"I think it would have been a bit more interesting for us if we hadn't got stuck behind the Renaults, but they made better starts and it took us a while to get past them," said Dennis. "At the end of the day, the nature of Formula One is that you have got to have such a performance advantage to get past. It's just not that easy."