We are not competitive - McLaren

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McLaren say they face a race against time to match the pace of their rivals ahead of the opening Grand Prix of the 2009 Formula One season on 29 March.

World champion Lewis Hamilton's car has performed poorly in pre-season testing.

Team boss Martin Whitmarsh said: "We are working hard to resolve a performance shortfall."

Norbert Haug, engine partner Mercedes' motorsport boss, added: "We are definitely not fast enough and not competitive enough to aim for wins."

During this week's test in Barcelona, Hamilton and his team-mate Heikki Kovalainen were well adrift of rivals Ferrari, BMW Sauber, Renault, Toyota and the cars of the new Brawn team, who have only been officially in existence for a week. Hamilton finished bottom of the timesheets on Wednesday after damaging his car's front wing and nose in a crash and was almost two seconds slower than Rubens Barrichello's fastest time for Brawn GP on Thursday.

When asked if the MP4-24 was fast enough, Whitmarsh conceded: "Not at the moment - and certainly not by our team's extremely high standards.

"Next week we will be testing at Jerez [in Spain], which many of our rivals will not be.

"We aim to continue to develop the car, and the result should be measurable on the stopwatch.

"Will MP4-24 be as quick as we want it to be by 29 March? Perhaps not.

"Will it be quicker than it has been this week at the Barcelona test? Yes."