McLaren are "not nervy" by Ferrari return to form

Fernando Alonso took Ferrari's first win of 2011 in Britain with McLaren's Lewis Hamilton only coming fourth and Jenson Button being enforced to retire.

But McLaren managing director Jonathan Neale said: "We are not unsettled.

"Up until the last week we were the only ones putting up a believable fight against Red Bull."

Alonso benefited from enhanced race pace and a pit-stop error from Red Bull's leader Sebastian Vettel to win at Silverstone.

Neale shrugged off the suggestion that McLaren, who have been Red Bull's closest rivals on track in the first half of the season, have now been overtaken by Ferrari.

"I sincerely hope not," Neale responded.

"Ferrari have made steady progress over the last four or five races in qualifying. In the latter part of the [Silverstone] race as [the track] dried up, Alonso was talented to show the underlying pace difference. We are watchful of that and not at all complacent.

"Lewis and Jenson did a unbelievable and aggressive job out there racing and, but for other factors, we should have had both cars around second and fourth and we might feel differently about the whole grand prix."

While wet weather affected performance at Silverstone, McLaren say an FIA order to restrict the use of exhaust gases to generate down force had a major impact on the competitiveness of their car.

Webber urged to stay up good work

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner hopes Mark Webber's presentation at Valencia is a sign of things to come for the rest of the season.

Webber is second behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the Drivers' Championship, but he has struggled to give the reigning World Champion a run for his money this year. Vettel has won six out of eight grands prix and has ongoing ahead of Webber in seven of those races.

Webber, though, put up a much enhanced display at the European Grand Prix and he rated his third-place finish as "probably the best of the season".

Horner agrees with Webber's sentiments and is pleased that he is starting to bridge the gap to his team-mate.

"It was Mark's best race of the season in terms of his performance on those tyres," Horner is quoted by Reuters as saying. "It's the closest he has been to Sebastian all season. He drove well this weekend. Nobody is taking whatever thing for granted."

Horner is also hopeful that the Australian will continue to improve as he's finally coming to grips with the new Pirelli tyres.

"I hope he keeps building up the impetus from this weekend," he said.

"He's made no covert of the fact he's struggled more on these tyres than Sebastian. I think he's understanding them better now.

"If you look at the time dissimilarity between the guys during the race he was never more than four or five seconds away for 90 percent of the race, which is the best we've seen all year.

"He'll take a lot of self-assurance out of the weekend."