Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso wants season to end despite progress

40

Fernando Alonso says McLaren wants the season to end despite recent progress with its car and Honda power unit.

McLaren has endured a frustrating year, with Honda starting the season with an unreliable and uncompetitive power unit. While there have been improvements in recent months - with both Alonso and Jenson Button more encouraged by the newest specification of power unit - Alonso says the team needs the season to end to allow it to make significant progress.

"We have been a little bit more competitive [in Mexico] than what we thought before we came, both in Austin and in Mexico the car is going in the right direction," Alonso said. "Aerodynamically we had some improvements that we introduced in Austin and the car is delivering what he expect and also the engine is improving every race with the spec and there is definitely more performance there.

"I think the whole package is improving every race. Let’s say it is not unfortunate the season is finishing because we want this very much to finish this championship and look to 2016 but we have a very positive trend in the package that hopefully we keep this trend even without racing or testing in the winter."

And Alonso says the winter is the crucial time for both McLaren and more specifically Honda to make large improvements.

"We have some high hopes for next year that it will be very different to 2015, well we hope so, and we are all working towards that. The next three or four months are very, very important and we are all united through the tough times and through the good times very, very soon."

Mexican Grand Prix - Driver ratings

Use the red tabs on either side of the screen to scroll through more Formula One news and features

Click here for the F1 drivers' girlfriends gallery

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.