Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso predicts McLaren jump 'in the next three or four races'

Fernando Alonso expects the input of both his and Jenson Button's experience to see a step forward from McLaren "in the next three or four races".

McLaren scored its first points of the season in Monaco courtesy of Button's eighth place, while Alonso retired for the second race in a row. With McLaren boasting the most experienced driver line-up on the grid, Alonso agrees with his team-mate's confidence there will be clear signs of progress as a result of their feedback in the coming races.

"This first month of this season, or 2015, we know that there are areas to improve – aerodynamically we are not at the top, but there are good steps coming," Alonso said. "With the power unit there are things to improve on the power side and the performance side.

"Together with Jenson we have very good experience, I have Ferrari experience with similar problems last year at the beginning and he was with Mercedes and experienced also some good things last year because the Mercedes was a very good baseline, so together we can input some of the ideas from our experience that will see the light come out in the next three or four races.

"Unfortunately we will enter into some penalties because we used three or four components of many of the things that we have available, but the important thing is to put a good base for next year and I’m pretty sure we will do it."

And Alonso looks at Red Bull's recovery in 2014 as encouragement McLaren can still challenge much further up the grid this season.

"It’s going to be difficult, yes, no doubt. Red Bull won three races last year with a deficit and a winter test that was quite terrible. They recovered quite quickly, so I’m positive and optimistic we will reach a very good level this year.

"I don’t know if it will be a podium or not, but to beat Mercedes you need to do something extreme and with Honda we are doing an extreme approach. It is taking time, but I’m optimistic."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.