SINCE the first race of the season in Melbourne, McLaren's Lewis Hamilton has been struggling to even finish in the Top Three.

Hamilton made a huge mistake in Bahrain, and was still nowhere near the pace of the Ferraris in Spain.

I feel it's not Hamilton who is really struggling, but McLaren as a team, are finding it hard to match Ferrari's incredible pace this season.

It could also be the lack of driver feedback from McLaren's two drivers who are only currently in their second season in F1. Fernando Alonso would have contributed heavily to the development of the McLaren car last season during pre-season testing, which gave McLaren that slight edge over Ferrari early last year.

Driver feedback is a very important aspect in a team. One must remember that the engineers don't drive the cars they build at all and fully rely on feedback from drivers to improve its performance, handling and so on.

An experienced driver like Michael Schumacher will be able to point out every single little part which can be improved on his car. This may be one of the problems that McLaren is facing at the moment, a lack of feedback from their two rookie drivers.

This article was first published in The New Paper on May 11, 2008.