Fernando Alonso launched his Malaysia Grand Prix from the back of the grid thanks to a 45-place penalty but held nothing back in another great drive which brought him all the way up to P7.
The remarkable result, coupled with Jenson Button's own top 10 finish, further validated McLaren-Honda's finish although the Spanish driver insisted there was still a way to go to level with the top tier of the grid.
"Things went well today," Alonso said.
"I was a bit lucky with the last Virtual Safety Car because we could do the final tyre change without losing places.
"Also, at the start, I managed to avoid all the cars but I couldn’t see much because Rosberg was spinning and there was a lot of smoke. With all that going on we managed to gain quite a few positions during the first lap."
McLaren had split its tyre strategies but every stop was executed perfectly its crew.
"Our plan was very aggressive, as we were going to use all new sets of tyres we had saved in qualifying.
"But once we saw ourselves so high up we had a few doubts and started to think about doing something more traditional to end up in 9th or 10th place, which was already good for us.
"In the end we decided to go on the attack and everything went our way."
Still, Alonso offered a reminder that McLaren-Honda was still a work in progress with much improvement still necessary before aiming for an outright win.
"I’m happy but there’s still a lot of work to do. We keep improving but the six faster cars are still very far ahead.
"Seventh is the best we can hope for at the moment but we have to push all the time. Vettel and Hamilton hit trouble, I finished 7th so that would have been 9th in normal conditions.
"So there’s no reason to start ringing the church bells because of this result."
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