McLaren boss warns of 'incredible' preparations

(27-Oct-98) - McLaren boss Ron Dennis has warned not to underestimate his
team in the world title showdown.

The 51-year-old said that McLaren has done 'an incredibly good job' since
the last Grand Prix. "We've dramatically improved our reliability over
the last few weeks," he said. "We worked hard on that side of
things."

McLaren has done almost half as many test days as Ferrari in the past five
weeks, but Dennis said: "It's not about quantity, it's about quality.
Time will tell, but we didn't need more time or more testing to achieve
what we wanted to.

"This is the most important Grand Prix of the year," said
championship contender Mika Hakkinen. "And you really have to get the
best out of yourself to do well. It's going to be very hard, but I still
have full confidence in myself, the team and the tyres. I don't feel any
negative points about this Grand Prix."

Like Ferrari, Dennis said that only winning the championship would be good
enough for McLaren.

"We've achieved a great deal this year," he said, "but we
won't be happy with not winning. Some people might want to paint coming
second as being acceptable, but that doesn't fall into our thoughts. We did
a pretty perfect race at Luxembourg, and there's no reason why we can't
repeat that."

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