Motor sport/ Spanish Grand Prix: BAR's Jenson Button has admitted the two-race ban handed down to his team spells the end of any ambitions he might have harboured of winning this year's Formula One world championship.

"You've got to say that our chance of winning the championship is pretty much gone," he said in the wake of the FIA suspending BAR from the championship after the team was deemed to have displayed a "lack of transparency" and "regrettable negligence" in their treatment of an investigation into a hidden fuel cell in the team's car.

"To come back's pretty much impossible,," he added, "especially with Renault being so strong in the first few races and Ferrari will be strong for the rest of the year."

Button and his team-mate, Takuma Sato, must sit out the Spanish and Monaco races and with both losing the points scored in Imola will have nothing to show for the season when they return to racing at the Nurburgring in three weeks' time.

BAR had arrived in Barcelona buoyed by a performance advantage found in pre-Imola testing, a boost from a poor start to the season that had left the British driver feeling he could fight for the drivers' championship

"With the step we made at Mugello I thought 'wow, we are going to have an awesome year this year'. This is the first one I thought I had a chance to challenge for the championship," he said. "I'd worked it out I had to beat (championship leader) Fernando Alonso by two points in every race, which I thought was reasonable."

That is now not to be and the absence of BAR for two races means that points that would have surely gone the team's way here and in Monaco are up for grabs.

Top of the list to take them are McLaren, who with the removal of Button from the Imola result grabbed third place and a podium spot for Alex Wurz, the team's test driver who had last competed in a grand prix in 2000, for Benetton.

It has been a frustrating season so far for the Mercedes-powered team, who feel they have built their best car for several seasons.

Kimi Raikkonen has been dogged by tabloid tales of bad behaviour away from the race track and most recently Juan Pablo Montoya was ruled out of two races with a scapula fractured playing tennis.

Despite claiming good results with four different drivers - second tester Pedro de la Rosa claimed fifth in Bahrain - McLaren have not made the most of the difficulties encountered by Ferrari in the first four races of the campaign.

Tomorrow could see a reversal of those fortunes, though, in yesterday's second practice session, Montoya, returned from injury, almost compounded the pain with a massive off at turn nine, though he was unhurt."I went to see the FIA medical delegate (Gary Hartstein) afterwards and he said I was absolutely fine," said Montoya.

McLaren's position is strengthened by the woes being experienced at Williams. The BMW-powered team yesterday discovered an exhaust valve problem with Nick Heidfeld's car and were forced to request new powerplants for both their drivers' cars from BMW.

Heidfeld ran in yesterday's practice sessions, meaning that with a new engine fitted today he will be demoted 10 places on tomorrow's grid.

All of which leaves Renault and Ferrari. The French team's star turn Fernando Alonso arrived on home turf after three straight wins and a stirring and encouragingly aggressive defence of his lead against Michael Schumacher at Imola.

There is pressure on the 23-year-old's shoulders, however. The Circuit de Catalunya is a sea of Renault blue and yellow this weekend, every last ticket for the 115,000-capacity track having been snapped up weeks ago.

It is pressure Michael Schumacher will hope to exploit.