Alonso wary of top speed handicap

Fernando Alonso says McLaren's lack of top speed will be its biggest handicap in today's Canadian Grand Prix.

While unable to replicate Monaco's Q3 performance, Alonso was relatively pleased to qualify 13th on the grid following a grid penalty for Max Verstappen. However, the double world champion admits McLaren needs to be wary of its speed deficit having been among the slowest five cars through the speed trap during qualifying.

“I think that will our biggest handicap, the top speed and our straights will be our main limitation," Alonso said. "So let’s try to think something clever in terms of strategy, in terms of tyre management to compensate a little bit.”

However, Alonso still believes McLaren can target another top ten finish due to the traditionally unpredictable nature of the race in Montreal, as long as reliability holds up.

“I think Canada always offers some nice races and some action, race, some safety cars and reliability issues for everybody, it’s a very demanding circuit. So I think starting P13 the points could be available for us at one point in the race so we will try to do something.

“I think we are all aware of the lack of performance and of reliability – these are two different issues. I think the team is do all we can to fix the issues. Some of the parts we’ve reinforced for this race, they’ve been working fine without problems.

"The parts that we broke this weekend are some of the part that are a little bit quite high mileage. But these are the limits of the Formula 1 cars but for sure we need to make the car faster, and stronger and as smooth as possible.”