There's no doubt that McLaren should be fighting for the championship. With a record such as theirs over the years, they are certainly contenders, but the question is, this year, are they up to it? After last year's second place, with Williams closing, they have to move ahead or risk being overtaken by the Grove team.

Of course, a matter of honour here is the rivalry between BMW and Mercedes. BMW came in with a bang last year and gave Mercedes a fright. Both teams have developed new engines for this year, and early indications suggested that the Mercedes unit was somewhat underpowered, but rumours suggest that this has been dealt with.

One major change for McLaren this year are Michelin's tyres, leaving Ferrari as the number one team at Bridgestone, while McLaren vie with Williams for Michelin's favours. Niki Lauda said earlier this year that he was pleased to have McLaren in the Michelin camp. Williams tended to go for harder tyres which didn't suit everyone. McLaren would attempt to get softer tyres available.

On the personnel front, things have been fairly stable which is always good news. Henri Durand might have left McLaren to go to Prost a year or so ago, and Adrian Newey nearly left. So too did Stephen Taylor - but remained for personal reasons. Otherwise, McLaren is pretty much the same as before, and from the race engineers to the team manager, no one has left. Only team co-ordinator Jo Ramirez will be absent, the veteran Mexican having retired. He will be much missed, but no one can say that he was a vital element to the team's success, just part of its smooth running.

Without doubt, however, the most devastating thing that happened to the team was the death of Paul Morgan, Mario Illien's partner in Ilmor which makes the Mercedes-Benz engines. He was the stabilising influence, while Illien was the genius behind the engines. The loss of Morgan was considerable, but fortunately Mercedes have gone some way to filling the gap, and in theory, Illen's work has continued as he formulated Mercedes' FO110M V10 engine.

The other loss, of course, has been somewhat more high profile. Ron Dennis has already said how much Mika Hakkinen will be missed this year, but has countered that by saying that Kimi Raikkonen "is a breath of fresh air within the team." Not everyone would agree, but the younger Finn's testing times have been impressive. He could well give Coulthard a nasty shock in several races this year, certainly in qualifying.

Dennis, however, did note at the end of last year that the team's strategy could be better. This is something that has been his responsibility, and he might have taken note that observers always notice that when McLaren has a major project - such as the road car or their new factory project - the team's performance suffers. It is said that Dennis is such a stickler for detail that he becomes distracted from the team's demands.

So it was interesting that he appointed a new steering committee for the team last year. This comprises technical director Adrian Newey, managing director Martin Whitmarsh, Mario Illen from Ilmor, and Mercedes' Dr Hans-Peter Kollmeier. This committee basically oversees the team, watches other elements within the team, and checks up on itself that everything is going in the right direction.

The team tested initially with an interim MP4-16Bs at Barcelona on January 7 when the testing ban was lifted. The new car was launched 12 days later, and from then on, McLaren tended to go to a different track to everyone else; when they were at Valencia, everyone else was at Barcelona. The old car was certainly quick in Wurz's hands; the new one quick in Raikkonen's. Coulthard had a nasty accident when he rolled the car at Barcelona, but fortunately it landed back on its wheels. Certainly the new car has been quick, and McLaren, of course, have done a lot of testing, but it remains to be seen whether all the gremlins have been ironed out of the new car.

McLaren have a tough goal in 2002. They obviously should be attacking Ferrari and challenging for the championship, but having lost their number one driver(whatever David Coulthard might think) and having a relative novice as number two in Kimi Raikkonen, they are going to have a tough time holding off Williams, let alone attacking Ferrari.

Bob Constanduros