Fernando Alonso is confident McLaren will be more competitive next time out in Austria after classifying last at the French Grand Prix.
McLaren struggled for performance all weekend at Paul Ricard with both Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne failing to progress from Q1 in qualifying. The Woking squad hasn’t scored points since the Spanish Grand Prix in early May, but Alonso is confident McLaren will turn it around.
“Yes, I am confident,” Alonso said. “This was by far the worst performance of the year. So, I really hope it is a one-off and not the normality.
“I had one set of tires for the whole race because we stopped on lap one to fit the yellow tires. So it was a defensive race and no frustration. But we know this weekend we have been quite uncompetitive from qualifying both cars out of Q1 and now both out of the points. We need to raise our level of Austria and Silverstone. It is 5 days’ time only, so we need to find solutions.”
From the highs of winning the Le Mans 24 Hours just over a week ago, Alonso was brought back down to earth in France, fighting much of the race towards the back of the field. The Spaniard is however taking the positives from his competitive position in the drivers’ championship where he sits eighth overall.
“No, I prefer to be here last and watch on television,” Alonso added. “We are two drivers doing the best job in the world and we were not competitive today or this weekend. As I said yesterday, we are very bad but we are seventh in the world championship [now eighth after Nico Hulkenberg’s ninth place in France]. So something good maybe is happening.”