Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

'Too many problems' for McLaren - Alonso

Fernando Alonso admits he is concerned after McLaren "had too many problems" with Jenson Button's car ahead of the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Button had to stop on track on three out of the four sessions on Friday and Saturday, failing to set a time in qualifying. While Alonso took the MP4-30 through to Q2 for the first time, his main focus is on the reliability issues facing the team and he says McLaren can't think about points before sorting those problems.

"We know the performance is not there but we know how to get there, hopefully soon," Alonso said. "But in terms of reliability we had too many problems, still. With Jenson’s car this weekend, it’s been not so good. So tomorrow, I think we have to try to arrive with both cars at the chequered flag and then whatever position this is, we’ll see how the pace is tomorrow. But we need to finish the race.

"The chequered flag will be the first priority because we’re not in a position at the moment to dream too much, or dream too high. That’s the first thing. It depends. We need to have a little bit of luck if we want to take points. Today, we were the 14^th fastest, so it’s difficult to believe tomorrow we’ll be in the first ten. We need some help from the others but I’m happy with everything."

And Alonso admits he was having "some doubts" about this year's McLaren-Honda after dropping out of Q1 in his first two races of the season. Asked if qualifying 14th in Bahrain was a morale boosting result, Alonso replied: "This is the way it is at the moment.

"Everyone in the team is calm, and focused on what we have to do. It’s very easy to panic in this situation when you’re down. But it’s the opposite. The team is hugely motivated because we know we need each other, we are all united. Hopefully we can do two steps in one, so next one will be Q3.

"It’s important. Obviously it’s not the dream come true going to Q2, especially for us because we have higher expectations than going to Q2. We needed the result because we knew we were going in the right direction with the car, the performance but always out of Q1 makes some doubts."

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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.