F1:'McLaren can fight Ferrari,' says Pedro

[Plex]

Pedro de la Rosa believes McLaren can fight Ferrari for this year's World titles.

Ferrari have been the team to beat in pre-season testing, with Felipe Massa dominating the timesheets at the recent Bahrain test.

The Brazilian's performances have led to some, such as Fernando Alonso, claiming that Ferrari are a step ahead of their rivals.

However, de la Rosa, McLaren's test driver, believes Alonso and his team-mate Lewis Hamilton can give Ferrari a run for their money this season.

"I'm sure that our cars will be fighting for victory. I think we can beat anyone," he told Spain's EFE news agency.

"I've worked very well with Fernando and Lewis (Hamilton). It seemed as if we had been working together for a long time."

The Spaniard is also confident that McLaren have put the reliability issues that dogged them the past few seasons behind them.

"Reliability has been good all winter," he added. "This allowed us to carry out the planned work smoothly, and all the improvements that came from the factory have meant a constant improvement.

"The problems that we had were always related to using components that were close to the end of their useful life and that's normal because we have to use them until they break in order to know their actual endurance."

Planet-F1