In the official McLaren preview for this weekend's Turkish Grand Prix, Norbert Haug spoke candidly about the inferior competitive position of the McLarens just now and indicated that Turkey is going to be another tough weekend. Reading between the lines, you sense the guys at Woking and Stuttgart are expecting another Ferrari one-two at Istanbul Park and the overall situation in the points is going to get worse before it starts to get better.

Here are two answers from Norbert:

Prior to Barcelona, it has been the opinion of experts that on this track the real balance of power would become obvious and that the team which is in front in Barcelona would remain in front for the rest of the year. What is your opinion?

'Barcelona as the first Grand Prix of the European season and, with its challenging track layout, is definitely a yardstick for the following races. In qualifying, we missed pole position by less than three tenths of a second; however, we carried a little more fuel and therefore more weight. Anyway, even with the same fuel load we wouldn't have been fast enough to beat Ferrari. Since winning the season opener in Melbourne, our car has improved gradually and has become significantly faster. Unfortunately, we didn't score all possible points, neither in Melbourne, Malaysia, Bahrain or Barcelona, mostly due to self-induced mistakes and this is the reason for the gap to the top of the rankings, after Ferrari had scored only one point in Melbourne. Our aim is to improve further over the next few races, however it is possible the Turkish Grand Prix might be a challenging race for the team.'

How do you evaluate the chances of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes in the Turkish Grand Prix?

'We didn't really shine here in the past, and also this time we are not the current benchmark. The team wants to score as many points as possible, but after three consecutive wins Ferrari obviously arrive here as the favourites.'

Lewis will have taken some comfort and renewed confidence from a solid race at Montmelo and we know he loves Istanbul Park(just think back to his epic GP2 race there in 2006) but, as last year's Grand Prix, underlined it is a tricky place to overtake, notwithstanding the obvious one under braking at Turn 12. The British driver knows that qualifying well will be critical but, again, it looks a tall order to get ahead of the red cars.

As for Heikki, however much the team big him up - he's "fighting fit" and so on - you have got to expect, at the very best, another steady weekend from him after his huge wipe out in Barcelona. And then there is BMW to think about. Will Robert get a good start to his race this time to match his performance in quali? It's going to happen sooner or later.

In the same preview Martin Whitmarsh provided a more positive outlook on the team's prospects at the open and free-flowing track in Turkey. What struck me, however, was the confidence Whitmarsh expresses about high-speed corners as against the under-performance of the car on tight turns. This would seem to be a reversal of the form of last year when the MP4-22 was the king of the twisty tracks but struggled against the Ferraris on the faster, sweeping circuits. The interesting element here is that Lewis's supporters have been arguing that the current run of poor form will come to an end at Monaco. After reading this you would have to question that assumption.

Here's Martin replying to two questions:

The Istanbul Speed Park tends to be quite a demanding circuit on tyres, what are your expectations in this area for the race?

'The circuit has actually some terrifically demanding corners, and it is therefore positive that we are coming away from Barcelona where the MP4-23 was very strong in high speed corners. If you can have a well balanced car through high speed corners then you can be kinder to the tyres. So we have every reason to be optimistic that we will be able to preserve our Bridgestone Potenzas at this track. A key part of the practice sessions is understanding the conditions we find when we get to the track, we will be very careful in these sessions to analyse, working together with Bridgestone, tyre wear and degradation with representative race fuel loads'.

Has the team been focusing on any particular areas of development prior to this race, what is required from a car to be quick here?

'Given the challenging nature of the circuit, we have come away from Barcelona with some confidence for the high speed corners, but we also come away knowing that we have areas where we need to strengthen the car. The tighter, more twisty parts of the Circuit de Catalunya were certainly our Achilles heel during the race weekend, and there has been a lot of analysis and study of that as we endeavor to strengthen our car in that area.'

Pic of Heikki at Barca courtesy of www.mclaren.com