Fernando Alonso says McLaren’s pace was “surprisingly good” before he was forced to retire from the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Following such a difficult opening weekend in Australia, McLaren made a clear step forward in Malaysia and Alonso was running competitively in the midfield when the team told him to retire the car due to an ERS cooling issue. Having said on Saturday McLaren would be able to fight with some of the teams near the back of the pack, he was still surprised to be so competitive in the race.
“The pace was surprisingly good, we were running with the pack and even catching the Red Bulls at the end before the pit stops,” Alonso said. “It was a nice surprise and hopefully in China we can make another step forward.
“These reliability problems are normal and without winter testing, what you normally find in winter testing we have to find in the first couple of races unfortunately. But we need to accept maybe some retirements and we are ready to do so.
“Definitely it has been a very nice weekend and a very nice surprise to see the improvement from Australia to here. If we keep this rate we will enjoy [success] very soon.”
And Alonso believes scoring a point would not have been out of the question, with the two Red Bull cars finishing ninth and tenth.
"We were out of sync with some pit stops with the others, but maybe tenth with one point was possible. The real positive thing is that we were able to run with everyone else and we were not the last two cars fighting with each other. This is the first step we had to do and it’s good that we’ve made it already."
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