McLaren looks forward to Monaco as start of something good

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- McLaren can take heart from a Turkish Grand Prix performance that left it closer to rival Ferrari than it has been since last season.

Now, if only McLaren could catch a break.

Since Lewis Hamilton's season-opening victory at the Australian GP, the British team has experienced an array of problems -- technical and driver-related -- that sent its Formula One championship hunt veering off course.

Hamilton was forced into a three-stop strategy at the Istanbul Speed Park when his tires were compromised due to his distinct driving style. The British driver overtook champion Felipe Massa 24 laps in, but couldn't make up the difference in the end.

Hamilton, who last year became F1's most celebrated rookie, called it his best performance to date.

"The real positive thing that comes from here is that we could clearly have beaten Ferrari," McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh said.

Even though Massa won for the third straight year in Turkey to secure Ferrari's fourth victory in five races -- and sixth in seven going back to 2007 -- the Italians are wary of their main rival.

Especially with the Monaco GP next on the schedule, where McLaren has traditionally performed well.

"I think that as I have always said, the championship is very, very long, it's always tough and I'm expecting for them still to be very aggressive," Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali said.

Ferrari's reliability since that one-point weekend at Melbourne has been the difference. Defending champion Kimi Raikkonen leads the overall standings with 35 points -- seven better than Hamilton and fellow Ferrari driver Massa. The team holds a 19-point advantage over BMW Sauber in the constructors' standings.

The rookie errors that Hamilton avoided last year in reaching nine straight podiums to begin his career seem to have been catching up with him since Melbourne.

A qualifying penalty and poor pit work cost the 23-year-old at Malaysia. A stall at the start was the problem in a 13th-place finish at Bahrain -- his worst showing in 24 career races.

But Hamilton set the second-fastest lap at Istanbul and lost by less than four seconds, his pit stops timing at nearly seven seconds. At least it wasn't the team's fault this time.