Dennis: Our race is with ourselves

McLaren boss Ron Dennis claims the team is only concerned with improving on last season's showing and will not be haunted by the relative failure of their 2007 campaign.
The Woking outfit lost the Drivers' Championship title on the last day of the season after Lewis Hamilton failed to finish high enough, allowing Kimi Raikkonen to claim the title by a single point.
This compounded the misery of losing out on the Constructors' Championship in the wake of the 'spying' scandal.
Dennis believes the team need to ignore their opponents and concentrate on the things they can control.
Dennis told Sky Sports: "We at Vodafone McLaren Mercedes never underestimate our opposition, and we won't do so this year.
"However, our race, if you like, is with ourselves: our team of engineers, at both McLaren and at Mercedes-Benz High Performance
Engines, is constantly striving to develop our car, and our hope and belief is that we'll do it better and more rapidly than our competitors will."
Pressed on whether former McLaren driver Fernando Alonso can put Renault back on the podium this season, Dennis kept his own counsel.
"As I say, our race is with ourselves," he said. "We respect all our competitors, but we don't spend a lot of time worrying about them."