But Fry is approaching this weekend’s race with increased confidence after Jenson Button gave BAR hope of a resurgence in Canada last weekend.

Button took pole position and challenged for the podium before eventually crashing into a tyre wall to ruin a superb weekend’s work.

Fry expects a repeat of that pace at Indianapolis this weekend, a track which he believes will be more to BAR’s taste than Montreal.

He said: “The performance of the car was good in Canada. Strategically we were on the right strategy. We did exactly the right things, the car performed extremely well and it’s just one week to go before we demonstrate that again.

“There’s no reason why we can’t perform equally well this weekend.

“We still have our focus on winning. We said at the start of this year we weren’t interested in just driving around in circles.

“Spirits were good anyway. This is a tough sport and the team’s spirit this year has been absolutely fantastic. The performance will encourage people even more.

“At Indianapolis we will be going for it. Last year it was good, both drivers like the track and obviously we will have another fresh engine as neither car finished. The Honda engine is very strong – I see no reason why we shouldn’t be strong there.”

Fry accepted the frustration of Button’s missed podium, preferring to see a competitive BAR fail to finish the race than an uncompetitive finish like that which so disappointed him at the Nurburgring three weeks ago.

“When you try and win races sometimes these things happen,” he added. “We are coming out of this definitely encouraged.

“It is very encouraging. We were in nowhere land in Germany and now we have got really somewhere.

“We would have been right up there he would have been in a podium position and it demonstrates the performance of the car.

“These things happen. We would much prefer to be at the front of the grid and fighting up there with the leaders and for this to happen than trolling around in 10th or 11th place.”

But BAR are not the only team expecting even better performances at Indianapolis, with McLaren boss Ron Dennis tipping his squad to again excel.

Kimi Raikkonen won in Canada last weekend but Dennis claims there is more to come from McLaren at Indianapolis.

“We went to Montreal knowing that it wouldn’t be a circuit we would excel on,” he said. “We have suffered a little bit on straight-line speed there. I don’t think that will be the case at Indianapolis.

“We go there with a reasonable expectation to fight for races wins.”

Raikkonen goes into this weekend’s race high on confidence.

He said: “It was a great result for me in Montreal last weekend, and I am looking forward to continuing the championship battle this weekend in Indianapolis.

“The Motor Speedway is legendary and it is one of the places that every driver would like to win at, like Monaco and Spa.”