McLaren must do better

David Coulthard's car stalled on pole

BBC Sport's motor racing correspondent Jonathan Legard says McLaren will be embarrassed by their latest failure to dent Ferrari's lead.

For a team which prides itself on its technical prowess, the last three races have been little short of an embarrassment to McLaren.

The latest failure in full view of Formula One's most prestigious, celebrity-laden galleries could possibly have cost David Coulthard his championship chance.

Instead of launching himself into the Monaco Grand Prix from his first ever Principality pole position, Coulthard was forced to the back of the grid like a naughty schoolboy.

The reason? His engine switched itself off seconds before the formation lap, just as it did in Spain where it wrecked his race, and again two weeks ago in Austria where Mika Hakkinen was the one to suffer.

Coulthard's subsequent charge up through the field to claim fifth place in both Barcelona and in Monaco proved what his McLaren can do when reliable.

But the damage had been done.

Michael Schumacher won both races, albeit with a massive slice of luck in Spain where Hakkinen's car expired when leading on the last lap.

Oh, another failure!

Or to be more accurate, one of Hakkinen's five mechanical failures in the seven races so far this season.

Dented aspirations

Battling such persistent, self-inflicted problems is undermining McLaren's title aspirations at a time when their attack on Ferrari looked to be exposing the champions.

Coulthard had every right to expect that he'd have struck a decisive blow from pole position this weekend.

Coulthard fought back to claim fifth place after starting from the back

Instead he's playing catch up again, and his team principal, Ron Dennis, has become embroiled in controversy over claims by the Arrows driver, Enrique Bernoldi, that Dennis and Mercedes Head of Motorsport, NorbertHaug, threatened him after the race.

Bernoldi - who'd justifiably defended his position against Coulthard's best efforts to overtake - claimed that Dennis and Haug had told him they had the power to end his career if he continued to drive.

Dennis subsequently denied he'd made the remarks, but he would surely be better served by attending to these mechanical malfunctions in his cars' launch control system.

McLaren, after all, like to promote themselves as the racing team where tactical jiggery pokery has no place.

As things stand, Schumacher has now escaped 12 points clear of Coulthard's clutches, and prepares for the next race in Canada where he has won three of the last four races.

Irvine success

If he's allowed to extend that outstanding record courtesy of another McLaren mistake, Ron Dennis will only have himself to blame.

That last word has been bandied freely enough around F1circles in connection with Jaguar.

But Eddie Irvine's excellent podium finish behind the two Ferraris rewarded a bold decision to introduce wholesale, not piecemeal, aerodynamic changes.

Irvine described them as "the biggest development I have ever experienced in Formula One."

But as he admitted, "We now need to see whether this works from Canada, and if so, we will have cracked a major nut."

The road ahead is still long but this could yet be the weekend when the Cat claws its way up the rankings?

BAR also had cause for celebration. Jacques Villeneuve recorded his best Monaco finish in fourth then expressed the hope that Canada's Circuit de Gilles Villeneuve would suit the team even better.

After a second consecutive blank weekend, Williams and Jordan have to believe the same, and try to make it happen.