Hamilton is clearly their best chance at winning the World Championship, and has a year's experience at the top level now.

However, I think, no matter how much McLaren will try to downplay it, the psychological effect of losing the title last year is affecting him far more than he's letting on, and the band-aid will only be ripped off those wounds at the business end of the season this year in a close race.

And if Hamilton is to win the championship in 2008, it will have to be in a close race. Ferrari, and Raikkonen, are far too good a package to let Lewis run away with the title here.

As for Kovalainen, boy did he ever benefit from the Hamilton/Alonso problems of last year? Suddenly he's jumped into a contender, and, as much as Ron Dennis and Lewis Hamilton might talk about having equal number 1's in his team, last year, as well as 2005/6 with Raikkonen and Montoya, proved that doesn't work in close title races.

If McLaren were serious about wanting to get the two best drivers they can and having them fight it out, they would've thrown the kind of offer that’s impossible to reject at Williams for Rosberg, or even tried to tempt Michael Schumacher out of retirement.

As it is, they made cursory glances in both directions before settling for a guy who, on the odd weekend, could put things together enough to pick up a win or two, but over the course of the season is not going to cause a problem for Hamilton.

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