Lauda: Battle is too close to call

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Monday 18th August 2008

Niki Lauda is refusing to put his money on either Ferrari or McLaren to win this year's titles, saying the teams are too evenly matched.

With a maximum of seventy points still to play there is still a three-way fight for this year's Drivers' Championship title involving Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa. The trio are separated by just eight points with Hamilton in the lead.

The Constructors' Championship has also become a close affair with Ferrari only 11 points ahead of McLaren.

The closely contested battle, which has seen the advantage shift more than once during the course of the season as teams and drivers make mistakes, has led to Lauda refusing to predict who will come out on top.

"At the moment both teams are even, especially as their drivers do sometimes make mistakes, although Massa was doing a perfect job in Budapest, but this did not help him because of his car's engine failure," Lauda told the official F1 website.

"Up until now it has been Massa and Hamilton, because Raikkonen's performance has been going up and down all the time."

As for the fact that Ferrari have two drivers in the hunt, former F1 driver Lauda believes sooner rather than later once will emerge as the frontrunner and he reckons it could be Massa.

"This will be automatically resolved at some point, but for the moment Massa has the edge over Raikkonen from the driver's point of view," he said.

Asked whether Raikkonen's World Champion status gave him an advantage over his rivals, Lauda said: "At the moment, clearly not."