London: The gap between Formula One's top two teams, champions Renault and Ferrari, and the rest is fast becoming a gulf.
McLaren, title runners-up last year, were well off the pace in Barcelona on Sunday when Renault's world champion Fernando Alonso triggered national jubilation by becoming the first Spaniard to win his home grand prix.
Honda, so promising in pre-season testing, took a double points finish but were no closer to the podium with seventh-placed Brazilian Rubens Barrichello lapped by Alonso.
"A year's a long time in grand prix motor racing," mused McLaren managing director Martin Whitmarsh after Kimi Raikkonen, last year's winner for the Mercedes-powered team, finished fifth.
"Frankly we had the third best car here and in those circumstances, unless something happened to the two teams in front, we were likely to be having a fifth place and that's what we had."
Raikkonen is third in the championship but 27 points adrift of Alonso after six races and 12 behind Ferrari's Michael Schumacher, who was second on Sunday after winning the previous two races.
McLaren are already 36 points behind Renault while fourth-placed Honda are 54 off the pace and readjusting their sights.
"The gap is bigger than we expected and disappointing obviously, coming away from only one week ago when we were very close to the frontrunners," said Whitmarsh.
"We were some way further behind. It's something that we've got to look at. We've got to go away from here and make sure we continue to develop the package, the car, the engine to make sure we are stronger for the rest of the season."
"Probably at the moment we shouldn't be focusing on the championship, we should be focusing on making our car go quicker and winning some races."
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The next race, on the tight and twisty Monaco streets, can throw up surprises -- seven times champion Schumacher did not win there in his dominant 2004 season -- but there have only been two winning teams so far this year.
Honda team boss Nick Fry acknowledged that Renault and Ferrari were making the running but refused to rule out a fightback.
"It's clear that Ferrari and Renault are doing a better job than the rest of us. McLaren and ourselves make up the next two down," he said.
"But we'll be giving it hell until the last race and trying to do our very best. We can improve race to race. There will be more for Monaco," he added.
In the meantime, reining in McLaren was the target.
"We've gone from a minute behind McLaren last weekend to a couple of seconds behind Raikkonen and a minute behind the leader this time round," said Fry.
"We've still got a whole raft of things that we're going to experiment with, we've got another test next week in Vallelunga, we've got a lot of ideas on ways to improve the car there. The new wind tunnel is coming on stream with real results so the thing I can do is look the drivers in the eye and say there are tangible things that we can do to help us do better."
Alonso, who is joining McLaren at the end of the year, waved a flag for his future team at least.
"The last two races have been only a fight between Ferrari and Renault and no one has come in really strongly," he said.
"Sometimes they show potential in the tests, sometimes on Fridays, sometimes in qualifying, but in the races the fight has been at least in the last two races between Ferrari and Renault. I think though they can come back, especially McLaren, and I'm pretty sure before long they will fight with Ferrari and Renault too."
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