BUDAPEST, Aug 4, 2008 (AFP) - McLaren Mercedes team chief Ron Dennis has relied for many years on the old adage that ´to finish first, first you have to finish´.

On Sunday, as his 26-year-old Finnish driver Heikki Kovalainen recorded his maiden victory in the Hungarian Grand Prix, courtesy of an engine failure in Brazilian Felipe Massa´s Ferrari, he must have recalled his own words and smiled.

For it is in such moments, such ´tipping points´ in the Formula One season, that world championships are won and lost.

Dennis had seen his star driver and championship leader Briton Lewis Hamilton lose his lead from pole position at the first corner and then suffer a puncture.

He must have wondered if it was not going to be a McLaren day as Massa streaked into the lead and dominated before his retirement three laps before the finish in a cloud of smoke.

And he must have grinned with pleasure as Kovalainen inherit Massa´s win, but in doing so he extended Hamilton´s lead to five points, the 23-year-old English tyro battling back from 12th to finish fifth.

Yet again, for Ferrari, it was an opportunity wasted - a victory thrown away as Massa´s dark face foretold as he departed the circuit and the team regrouped to lick their wounds and pledge unity and a fightback.

Ferrari still lead the constructors championship, but their recent fragility and inconsistency is in contrast to McLaren´s burgeoning speed and reliability - and the good fortune that favoured Hamilton.

The young driver may not have completed a rare hat-trick of wins, but he did his best in a difficult contest and collected a few more precious points - leaving Ferrari with a headache as they prepare for the final seven races of an 18-race season.

"We have to overcome our problems with reliability and with our tyres performance," said Ferrari chief Stefano Domenicali. "But, for sure, reliability is the biggest thing because we cannot accept to have these kind of problems, even if it was only 10 kilometres from the end.

"We cannot have this problem of reliability because we are paying too much of a price for it. On the other hand, qualifying is crucial and the difference today was really the fact that on one side we were able to jump in front and do our race as we were able to do, and on the other hand, in the first part in the middle of the field, knowing that it was really impossible to do something, in spite of having the right pace."

He added: "What we need to improve is looking ahead, above all, at the next Grand Prix where maybe there will be tricky conditions in terms of temperature, in terms of the situation, weather, something like that.

"For sure we need to prepare our cars and tyre set-up maybe in a different way, because we saw what we suffered, for example, in Germany."

His concerns over tyres for the upcoming European Grand Prix on the new street circuit in Valencia, Spain, in the race to be run later this month, reflect the team´s anxiety in the run-up to their home Italian Grand Prix at Monza on September 14.

If Ferrari are still sliding away from McLaren´s current pace-setting performances, they know the season also may slip from their grasp.

As Hamilton said of his good fortune in bouncing back from his puncture to score four precious points, it was his two punctures last season that cost him the championship.

McLaren now seem more bullet-proof than previously and the confidence that Sunday´s win will give Kovalainen is another positive factor for them in the championship run-in.