(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-12-07 11:01

LONDON - McLaren believe Lewis Hamilton can lead them to the Formula One title next season and have dropped a strong hint that Fernando Alonso's replacement will come from within the team.

"Lewis is now an absolutely proven product. He can lead a team and he can be the talisman that can take us to a championship," Britain's Autosport Web site (www.autosport.com) quoted McLaren's chief executive Martin Whitmarsh as saying on Thursday.

"Consequently, there's not a lot of difficulty for the team -- we already have within the team two very competitive and great drivers in the form of Pedro de la Rosa and Gary Paffett," he added.

"We've got to find people who are better than them, and that's not easy."

"There aren't many drivers in the world who you could say are materially better than those two, and we're mindful of the stability that using drivers who are already within the team brings us."

De la Rosa, 36, is the official reserve driver and took a second place in 2006 when he replaced Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya for eight races.

He and Briton Paffett have been testing for McLaren in Spain in recent weeks.

McLaren, who split with double world champion Alonso last month after falling out with the Spaniard during the course of a bitter and controversial season, have the most desirable vacancy remaining on the starting grid.

Whitmarsh made clear that, despite McLaren's much-stated policy of equality between drivers, Hamilton would be de facto number one.

"We're determined that Lewis will be the world champion by this time next year," he said.

"Back at our factories in Woking, Brixworth and Stuttgart, people are working incredibly hard to make that happen. It's fantastic that Lewis has already earned that depth of emotion and support within the team."

Hamilton won four races and finished runner-up in his rookie season by a single point to Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen after blowing a comfortable lead with two races to go.