Fernando Alonso is happy with the progress McLaren has made over the first few races of the 2016 season but he knows they have a lot further to go before they will be fighting at the front consistently.
Alonso started eighth for the Monaco Grand Prix and finished the race fifth. He used his tyre strategy perfectly to get himself up into a competitive position that he maintained until the end of the race. The changing conditions made it a challenging race for the double world champion but he made the circumstances work to his favour.
After the track dried up following a Safety Car start, the Spaniard spent a lot of his stint on the dry tyres holding back Championship leader Nico Rosberg. The German tried to pass Alonso on many occasions, consistently running about half a second behind the McLaren driver for most of the second half of the race. A mistake by Rosberg saw the Championship leader go straight on at the chicane after the tunnel – taking the pressure off Alonso and allowing him to finish in a comfortable fifth place.
The race result showed that McLaren is taking steps in the right direction but there is still a lot of room for improvement.
“In terms of driving and concentration, today’s was an extremely tough race.” Alonso said after being questioned about the mixed conditions in Monte Carlo. “We started behind the Safety Car – with almost zero visibility – then switched to Inters; but nobody had done any laps on those tyres before the race, so it was unknown territory for everyone.
“Once we’d switched to dry-weather tyres, there was still only a very narrow dry line on the track, so if you went just half a centimetre off that line, you’d crash. There was just no room for mistakes today.”
Although it was a tough race, Alonso was still happy with the result. McLaren got its second double points finish of the season and has consecutively been in the points since the Russian Grand Prix. Alonso also had his second consecutive appearance in Q3 this weekend.
“We got a good result – both cars in the points ought to make us reasonably happy. I think we’re progressing well: the results make it quite obvious what we’re achieving, so we’re heading in the right direction. We’re still not where we want to be – right at the front, fighting for wins and podiums – but I’m happy about how things are going.”
