Thursday 21 August at 11:32 : F1's championship contenders have identified finding consistency as the key to securing the 2008 title.

At the top of the current points standings is Lewis Hamilton, who has won more races than his challengers so far this season but also emerged from a couple of troughs.

"The most important thing now is consistency," the McLaren driver admits.

"This year, everybody's results have been more varied and every driver who has won a race has also failed to score on at least two other occasions," he said.

Five points behind Hamilton is Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, but his teammate Felipe Massa would be topping the charts if not for his engine failure near the end of an inspired drive in Hungary three weeks ago.

Raikkonen admits: "We haven't lost anything, but we need to get better results consistently.

"From now on, every single race will be extremely important and every single point will have a great value," the Finn explained.

Massa agrees that mistakes - whether their origin is driver error or car unreliability - will from now on spell disaster for the contenders' chances.

Referring to his Budapest engine failure, the Brazilian said: "We can't throw away points like that.

"We have to be as competitive as at Budapest, but we need to raise our reliability. We can't repeat certain mistakes: we don't have any more excuses."