Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso admits he expected more from McLaren

Fernando Alonso admits he was expecting McLaren to be more competitive by this stage of the season.

Neither McLaren finished the Canadian Grand Prix despite a power unit upgrade from Honda, with the car uncompetitive on the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. While Alonso is confident the team is still improving, he concedes he wasn't expecting to still be struggling so much after seven rounds of the season.

"Probably we expect a little bit more but that’s the way it is," Alonso said. "I think the performance has aways been improving, race after race, and I think here will be the case as well. The thing of this weekend is just the final result which we don’t know will be good enough to make us happy, because with the penalties we will start a little bit at the back.

"That will be not ideal but in terms of performance we expect a lot from the car in the next month or two months, but we will see how we end up before summer and before the end of the year. That will give us some hopes for next year and that’s the way it is."

And Alonso says he remains positive because of the work he is able to see behind the scenes at McLaren as it seeks to move up the grid.

"Why do I remain optimistic? Because I see a lot of things inside the team. I see the group of people we have, the programme we have in terms of chassis and engine. I see the resources, I see the talent of the team, so it’s a question of time when we will be competitive. Hopefully we will make it short, this period of learning we are having at the moment, 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.