McLaren 'going in the right direction' - Alonso

After a thoroughly dispiriting time of things in 2015, with Fernando Alonso looking at one point as being on the brink of walking away from Formula One altogether, the former world champion is now sounding much more upbeat about how things are going at McLaren in the second year of its reunion with engine providers Honda.

Alonso said that the new spirit of optimism was coming right from the top, from McLaren CEO Ron Dennis and racing director Eric Boullier.

"Eric’s comments were quite optimistic, the team has been very optimistic recently, with Ron saying we will win after Mercedes, they are the bosses so I have to agree with them!" said Alonso ahead of the Monaco Grand Prix.

"What Ron says it’s something he feels and I tend to agree with him, but with next year’s regulations it’s difficult to know how things can mix in terms of competitiveness.

"I see this project going in the right direction: last year we had many difficulties, we were under performing and all we had was hope things would get better.

"Now we have more than hope, we’ve started to see the results, to touch the results and we feel more competitive.

"Everything in the background, in Sakura and Woking, makes a lot of sense, everything is up to speed, so we’re more confident now than one year ago, in terms of this project and how we will stop Mercedes domination."

Of course, Alonso is also keeping his feet firmly on the ground: "I think we have to be realistic and keep our feet on the ground. Tomorrow we’ll put the car on the track and we’ll see how competitive we’ll be. We came here last year with some expectations, because this is not a power track, but we weren’t as competitive as we expected.

"Mercedes will be very, very strong, Red Bull will be very strong, Ferrari will be also competitive, so we need to make sure we’re close to that group of cars and if we can be somewhere there or right behind them, it’s a good result for us."

Chris Medland's 2016 Monaco Grand Prix preview

Jacques Villeneuve - Race of my life

Technical analysis: Barcelona

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.