McLaren principal race engineer Phil Prew has admitted that his drivers have to beat Mark Webber this weekend if they and their team aim to retain any hope of challenging for the title.

"I think our target this weekend is very much to get on the podium," said Prew in the latest phone-in press conference hosted by the Vodafone McLaren team, "in fact we need to be in front of Webber. So we need two cars at the front, competing for the front row of the grid in qualifying, and then delivering a race result on the podium. That's the target."

Asked if the new circuit might suit the MP4-25, Prew said: "To be honest, it's a good combination of quite a few different sorts of circuit. It has some long straights with big stops, not dissimilar to Canada, which I think will favour our car. Sector two is more like Turkey, where we performed quite well. And then you come to the last sector, which would typically be a very high-downforce sector, a bit more like Hungary perhaps.

"If I had to say which car it favoured, I'd say it was actually quite a neutral circuit as there are aspects of the track that will favour every one of the top teams. It just depends whether we can gain enough on the long straights and the high-speed sectors to compensate for the strengths of the Red Bull in some of the flowing, long corners that we see towards the end of the circuit."

At a time when many are still questioning the radiness of the Yeongam track, Prew is fairly optimistic. "I actually walked the circuit this morning with the other engineers, and I have to say I was fairly impressed with what I saw," he said. "The track itself, the kerbs and run-offs and all of that sort of thing looked pretty good.

"As to the track surface itself, yes it has been recently laid, and it is a bit of an unknown. However, I don't think it looked too bad in that it wasn't particularly greasy underfoot and it looked, from what you can tell, smooth, well-laid and consistent all the way around. In terms of how it develops and how the tyres interact with it, it is going to be guesswork. It's going to evolve, I expect, very quickly through the first session and then I think we should expect it to continue to improve all the way through qualifying and then the race.

"For us, that means we have to be careful about what set-up work we do, because the result could be influenced more by track evolution and not necessarily a change that you make to the car. Equally in qualifying you need to be prepared that the track could be improving quickly and therefore a lap time set at the beginning of Q1 might not be sufficient by the time you get to Q1. And even in Q3, I think the desire to do your lap right at the end will be there. So I think track evolution will be the big player, and we just have to do what we always do, which is adapt the cars to the conditions that we find. The fact is, the conditions might change more quickly than normal here, but it's what the guys do and what the drivers are used to doing."

Asked about developments on the car for this circuit, Prew revealed that the team will be running its new rear wing. "We will certainly be running it on Friday," he said. "We also have a modified front wing, so they're the two big updates that will be visible on the car.

"In addition to that we have some smaller mechanical updates which will be on the car as well and aiming to add to performance. We certainly will be running the new rear wing on Friday and continuing our investigations which were kind of cut short at Suzuka. Our understanding has improved and we're optimistic that we can make it work here."

Despite the lack of results in the last few races, the Englishman remains optimisitc and insists that his team and its drivers are still in the hunt. "

I feel we've under-delivered points in the last couple of races, which is a frustration to the drivers and the team," he said. "But they know that the car has the pace and the potential to be competing, and finishing higher up than we've achieved recently.

"They both want to win races and they both want to win this championship, and to do that we have to be winning. It's at a stage now where a win is what's required and that's what we're gunning for. We have continual upgrades to the car, which helps to motivate everybody. They're plenty motivated at the moment."