Alonso braces for more pain at Monza

Fernando Alonso expects McLaren-Honda’s poor form to extend into next weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, after experiencing a “painful” outing at Spa.

Despite Honda bringing a major power unit upgrade to Belgium, the British squad still languished at the back of the field, with Alonso and team-mate Jenson Button toiling to 13^th and 14^th. The Spaniard had actually claimed it was “difficult” to judge the gains yielded by his new engine as early as free practice.

Although Alonso is inclined to revise his judgment on the extra speed at hand, the 34-year-old does not think this will be enough to fare much better at another power-sensitive track like Monza.

“There are minor steps these days in F1,” he said. “When you add some extra horsepower you feel a bit quicker, but when you are a long way back it is always not enough.

“We will put things right and hopefully be more competitive, but it is a slow process, unfortunately, and painful, but we are all together going through this time.

“Hopefully we can learn some things, but Monza will also be difficult, the same as Spa, because of the nature of the circuit.”

Having returned to McLaren after five years of efforts at Ferrari failed to yield the third world championship he has been seeking for a decade, Alonso insists his motivation is not waning in the face of hardship.

“There are two ways you can approach this: be optimistic and work together with the team to solve the situation as soon as possible, or be pessimistic and think it's not worth doing anything.

“I don't think the latter will be the exit of this tunnel. We will continue to work.

“Things are going better and better, it's just unfortunate that, as we saw in Spa and for Monza, we don't see much since these are power-affected circuits, but we are going in the right direction.”

Click here for a lighter look at the Belgian Grand Prix, courtesy of F1i special contributor Eric Silbermann.

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