By Andrew Benson Motorsport editor at the Spanish GP

David Coulthard has taken just four points from as many races

The struggling McLaren team are producing a major redesign of their car in an attempt to rescue their season.

After battling for the title last year, McLaren are a lowly fifth in the constructors championship in 2004 with the slow and unreliable MP4-19.

A new, redesigned version of the car is on target for introduction at the German Grand Prix on 25 July, technical director Adrian Newey said.

Newey has said the team's lack of pace will not be solved until then.

The decision to launch such a major redesign of the car mid-season has been made after McLaren's worst start to a Formula One campaign for more than 20 years.

The MP4-19 is, according to Newey, a "de-bugged version" of the MP4-18 that was due to race in 2003 but did not because it was never reliable enough.

We have been distracted by too many problems, and have perhaps taken our eye off our core business of winning Grands Prix Adrian Newey McLaren technical director

The fact that the aerodynamic design of McLaren's 2004 car was effectively frozen in the middle of last year may go a long way to explaining why the team are struggling for pace this season.

Newey has also accused McLaren of becoming distracted by its interests outside F1.

Those include building a new factory that is more than two years behind schedule and massively over budget, and producing a high-performance road car with F1 partners Mercedes-Benz.

"As an organisation, we have been distracted by too many different problems, and have perhaps taken our eye off our core business of winning Grands Prix," he said.

The team have reorganised its management to try to resolve some of their problems.

McLaren managing director Martin Whitmarsh was last month put in charge of Mercedes' Ilmor engine production facility in Northamptonshire.