Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso bemoans 'painful weekend' for McLaren

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Fernando Alonso says McLaren endured a painful weekend after finishing 13th in the Belgian Grand Prix.

Honda updated its power unit ahead of the race at Spa-Francorchamps, with motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai predicting it would result in a "big step" forward. However, McLaren was keen to play down its chances of a good result having opted to take a number of power unit penalties.

Having been uncompetitive all weekend and finished the race a lap down in 13th place, Alonso admits it was a difficult race to enjoy.

"It was unfortunately not a very interesting race in terms of fighting other cars," Alonso said. "But we did finish the cars and hopefully we got some information. But yeah – painful weekend."

And Alonso says he is preparing himself for a similarly difficult time at the Italian Grand Prix in two weeks.

"We were not competitive. We did a good start from P20 to P13 – that was the only joy probably, the first lap and the start. After that we dropped to our natural position and kept running there.

"Monza will be quite difficult, a tough weekend, but there will come some better races and we must maximise these opportunities."

Click here for Sunday's gallery of the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps.

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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.