Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso: Red Bull 'a good example' for McLaren

Fernando Alonso says Red Bull is "a good example" for McLaren to aspire to in terms of getting the most out of its package.

McLaren has been hampered by performance and reliability issues with its Honda power unit so far this season, similar to Red Bull's own problems with Renault. However, Red Bull has improved its chassis in recent races and been much more competitive despite the deficit, and Alonso says McLaren can take inspiration from the job being done by the four-time constructors' champions.

“They are fighting for points and they’re even fighting for podiums," Alonso said. "I think in Spa with [Daniel] Ricciardo so, definitely they are competitive and we’ll see what we can do. I think we have a good example there that they don’t have the best package but they’re still fighting for top places, so we’ll try to do the same.”

However, with McLaren struggling so much at Monza, Alonso says it will look to save its power units on Saturday rather than run a lot of laps.

"For us, nothing will change because we changed engine again so we will be starting last as we did in Spa. So we’ll try to do minimum laps tomorrow, try to save the engine and in the race, as I said we will start last and hopefully take over some places."

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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.