LONDON: McLaren chief executive Martin Whitmarsh says the Formula One team will continue to push the development of their MP4-23 car right until the final round of the season as they bid to fend off Ferrari for world championship success.

The Woking outfit last won a world title in 1999. But they claimed the lead in the constructors' championship ahead of their Italian rivals for the first time since the Malaysian GP and strengthened their advantage in the drivers' chase after Lewis Hamilton finished third in Singapore last Sunday.

But with the battles for both crowns likely to remain tight over the final trio of flyaway races, Whitmarsh says the team have updates planned for the season-finale in Brazil. He is also hoping they can introduce smaller ones in between.

'Ordinarily, the Singapore weekend would have been our last big upgrade package of the season,' he said.

'But we've now got an upgrade package focused on Brazil and will be looking to see whether we can pull any of those improvements forwards.'

Hamilton's six point-haul in Singapore came on a rare scoreless day for Ferrari, after the Maranello squad's pit-lane chaos badly affected both their drivers' races.

But despite not taking full advantage of their rivals' plight with victory, Whitmarsh believes McLaren were right not to take unnecessary gambles with the title fight so tight.

'We feel that we dealt with the situation well,' he said. 'With Lewis, the fact is that when you're fighting for a world championship, you're necessarily more risk-averse than those teams who feel more comfortable pushing for a strong result.

'And while we take nothing away from the efforts of Renault and Williams, our evening's work was tinted by the knowledge that neither Ferrari driver looked like scoring strongly.

'We'd have looked pretty silly if we'd thrown Lewis' points finish away by telling him to push like mad.

'The reality is that we played the numbers game perfectly on Sunday evening and were beaten by two cars which, for one reason or another, were able to exploit different variables than ourselves.'

Renault's race winner Fernando Alonso benefited from an early fuel stop to jump ahead of much of the field when the front runners pitted under the safety car. Williams' Nico Rosberg still ended up second despite receiving a 10-second stop-go penalty for pitting while the pit lane was closed.

Whitmarsh said in hindsight, McLaren could have also have pitted Hamilton at the same time, given how Rosberg benefited from a clear track to build a gap on the rest of the field before his penalty was eventually issued.

The delay in the stewards' decision 'effectively neutered his (Rosberg's) eventual stop-go penalty', argued Whitmarsh.

'Had we done the same, Lewis would very possibly have won the race.'

However, he acknowledged it would have been a risky move at the time, noting: 'In truth, you can't second-guess things like that.'

Whitmarsh also suggested that F1 drivers could compete for a US$1million (S$1.42 million) Friday jackpot as part of a revamp of grand prix weekends.

Friday has staged only free practice sessions ever since Friday qualifying was scrapped in the mid-1990s. This has resulted in low crowd numbers - for instance, the crowd last Friday in Singapore was estimated at only 50,000 as compared to over 100,000 for the race itself.

Media interest in Friday practice is often low as well.

'We (the teams) are looking at the whole format of a race weekend,' the Briton, who heads the sporting working group of the newly-created Formula One Teams Association (Fota), told autosport.com.

The Fota is working with the International Automobile Federation (FIA) and commercial rights holders to find ways of improving the spectacle, cutting costs and increasing revenues.

One of the proposals tabled for discussion: Creating a mini-competition where everyone tries to set the fastest time with the winning driver earning a million dollars.

Explaining the need to jazz up the action on Fridays, Whitmarsh said: 'It means there would be something to write about and it introduces the weekend.

'It is separate from the race.' -- REUTERS