Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso unsure of McLaren's standing

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Fernando Alonso admits he is unsure where McLaren currently stands in the pecking order as the British Grand Prix weekend gets underway.

McLaren made solid progress in the opening races this season, culminating in Jenson Button scoring the team's first points in Monaco. Both cars have retired from the two races since then - with the Canadian and Austrian circuits not suiting the MP4-30 - while also taking a number of power unit penalties.

Alonso admits he is unsure how competitive McLaren can be if it doesn't face any reliability issues at Silverstone.

"I don’t know really, it’s a question mark, also for us," Alonso said. "The performance of the car after Austria we were not sure. With the new aero package it feels more competitive, the car, but how competitive we don’t know because Austria was not our preferred track in terms of layout.

"It will be interesting to see this weekend if we can, first, finish the race, because after four retirements in my case I would like to see the chequered flag if possible. If we do so I think to see how competitive we are is an answer we need to get this weekend because we don’t know if we are 12^th, if we are 17^th or if we are eighth, so it’s an important weekend for us."

Alonso is also limiting his running on Friday having had to revert to a previous power unit, but Honda is set to be allowed an extra power unit this season.

"We will put some old engines to avoid some penalties here. That maybe will limit the amount of laps that we can do in free practice but we need to find quality laps, not number of laps, especially in free practice, and maximise the performance this weekend and see where we are."

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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.