Lewis Hamilton is confident McLaren are learning as they go along even if at times it appears they are going backwards.
2009 has been nothing short of a disaster for McLaren. After the highs of winning last year's Drivers' title with Hamilton, this season they have found themselves lapping near the back of the field, often not even in a position to score a single World Championship point.
But despite the trials and tribulations, Hamilton believes his team are learning valuable lessons, although concedes the ban on in-season testing has not helped their situation.
"I'd say that from every race we learn more and more," the Brit said. "We're trying to focus on this year and understanding where the car's faults are and where we can make it better.
"It would be good if we had testing, but we don't. The race weekends are our three day tests and we learn more and more about it.
"If we understood it we would fix it and we would be winning races, and we would have all the updates and everything by now. But we're not far away, I think, from understanding it. We'll just have to wait and see.
"I definitely don't want to take this year's car into next year's car, but we definitely need to understand where and why (it went wrong), because from their understanding the car should have been good."
And although Hamilton has bagged just nine points in the opening eight races of this campaign, the 24-year-old insists it is not yet time to focus his attention on next year's Championship.
"I don't have to do that for a while yet," he said. "Going into probably the last few races I can start focusing on next year. But it doesn't have to happen now.
"We've got a lot of work to do with the guys now, to give them the right feedback and find the way forward, and make sure that we feel good in the car next year and it feels like it's going to be a winning car.
"I drove my old car from last year on the demonstration and straightaway I felt 'yeah, I know why this car was a winning car'. It feels right."
