Sort-of-retired McLaren driver Fernando Alonso predicts the team will be more competitive in 2019, as the Spaniard explains the latter half of 2018 was used to focus on next season.
McLaren's season was one of two halves - before and after the summer. In the season opener in Australia, both Alonso and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne finished well within the points, which was a massive relief after the three years of struggle with Honda. Alonso finished as high as fifth.
This continued for some more races, with Alonso finishing seventh in Hungary as well heading into the summer break.
After the summer, though, performance fell off a cliff for McLaren. The cars rarely made it out of Q1 on Saturdays, and never scored points on Sundays. It looked grim for the Woking-based team, but Alonso assures that the future is bright.
“Since July we have been testing experimental parts for next year,” he told Motorsport.
“There is a lot of optimism in the team with the direction the car took in the last couple of months.
“We understood our problems, we know last year our car was very competitive on the chassis side – we know that, we have the GPS comparison, we know the speed in the corners. The car last year, 12 months ago, was very competitive in some areas and we lost that level of competitiveness this year, unfortunately.
“We understood why, so I think next year the team will be in a much better position and I am happy for them.”
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