Zoom The next two races will be pivotal, says Whitmarsh

After winning three consecutive races (at Silverstone, Hockenheim, and on the Hungaroring), the McLaren Mercedes team's streak came to an end at the conclusion of the European Grand Prix in Valencia when Felipe Massa took the honours for Ferrari.

The next two rounds in Belgium and Italy will be demanding on cars, engines and drivers. All the F1 teams spent three days testing at Monza last week in order to prepare for these highly-anticipated destinations.

Martin Whitmarsh, CEO Formula 1 at McLaren Mercedes, speaks of the challenges looming on the horizon.

Spa and Monza are Formula 1's most severe 'power circuits' - does that change the way you approach these back-to-back races?

"The reality is that we have tremendous faith in our colleagues at Mercedes-Benz and feel comfortable with both our engine's performance and reliability. The recent engine failures suffered by Ferrari in Hungary and Valencia clearly demonstrate that even a homologated engine can break, so we take nothing for granted. "

"There's always an element of risk whenever you come to two fast and demanding circuits but we have the additional security of knowing both our drivers can each still suffer an engine failure without receiving a 10-place grid penalty."

What developments are on the car for Belgium?

"We've got a number of smaller aero developments in the pipeline - there's nothing on the car that will be visually very startling, but there's plenty of detail work. We're also focusing on further mistake-proofing our systems: the championship is going to be a hard-fought slog until the end of the year and we need to leave no stone unturned in our quest for additional performance and improved reliability."

"From a human and physical perspective, these two races are also pivotal to our title challenge - it's vital that every member of the team pulls together to make sure these races pass without undue incident and set us up nicely for the final flyaway races."

D.B. © CAPSIS International