Alonso eyeing strong finish to the season

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Fernando Alonso is aiming for regular points finishes in the remaining six races of the 2016 world championship, and believes that the McLaren is now one of the fastest cars on the grid.

Alonso finished in seventh place in the Singapore Grand Prix, which he believes confirms McLaren's status in the running order at this stage of the season.

"I think we’ll be faster in the coming races and we’re hoping to be the fourth quickest team from now until the end of the season," he said. "We’ll be targeting 7th and 8th places, and if the others have problems we can move up."

Alonso admitted that finishing in seventh last weekend had been the result of a little luck going McLaren's way at Marina Bay.

"Seventh was above what we were showing until the start the race," be admitted. "We weren’t perhaps quite the fourth-fastest team here this weekend, so it’s thanks to good strategy and a good start that we were able to bring home this result.

"We got lucky as Carlos had problems and Hulkenberg retired at the start," he added. "It was the maximum we could achieve today – the best of the rest after the two Mercedes, the two Red Bulls and the two Ferraris.

"Still, I think it was the first time nothing happened during the race here [to affect my race.] For sure we still don’t have the pace to fight for more, for podiums, but in some races if those ahead will falter, we may get there."

Alonso's good fortune wasn't shared by his team mate Jenson Button, who was caught up in Nico Hulkenberg's accident at the start of the race and eventually had to retire after going a lap down.

"The car had been damaged, so I was lacking downforce for the remainder of the race. Even then, the downforce I did have wasn’t properly balanced," said Button after the race.

"The reason we stopped was that we were concerned about the brakes – the temperatures were rising because of the duct damage. We were worried about a failure – it was the right decision to stop."

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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.