Alonso hopes for the best, expects the worse

Fernando Alonso probably isn't pinning his hopes on a sudden improvement of his McLaren-Honda's health this weekend in Melbourne.

Dogged by performance and reliability issues in pre-season testing, and with little time to implement major changes, Honda's power unit is putting the Spanish driver and his entire team on the back foot at the outset.

"After a difficult two weeks of testing we’re prepared to face a difficult weekend in Melbourne," said Alonso.

"We’ll do our best with what we have and there’s a lot of hard work and collaboration happening within the team, but the lack of time before the first race means you have fewer options for big changes.

"The first step will be to work on reliability before we can make any assumptions or predictions about performance, and we will try to enjoy the weekend as much as we can."

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Still, the double world champion hopes to make the best of a bad situation, and is bullish overall for Formula 1 as it puts to the test its new regulations.

"I’m incredibly motivated for 2017 and I can’t wait to see what kind of racing this new shake-up of the sport will bring.

"We already know the sport is a lot more physical and the cars are more challenging to drive – from a driver’s point of view this is exactly what we were looking for in the new regulations, and I really hope this will translate to good battles on track.

"The start of a new season always gives us a range of feelings – great excitement to be racing again, and the sense of the unknown as we go into a formula with a brand-new set of regulations.

"We don’t yet know where everyone stands as testing was a proving ground for the teams more than ever before, and it’ll be interesting to see how quickly teams show their hand over the course of the weekend."

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