Fernando Alonso has said that his team McLaren have only had one proper upgrade this entire season, as the team has been struggling to keep up with its competitors as the season has progressed.
The team already admitted that this year's MCL33 has less downforce than the car from last year, which isn't exactly a good sign, as last year's cars wasn't exactly winning races.
Alonso did acknowledge that the team is working hard to solve the many weaknesses, but the lack of upgrades hasn't impressed the Spaniard.
"In Barcelona we introduced a new package with a new nose and different things and we recovered a little bit the level," the two-time champion told RaceFans.
“So we performed well in Barcelona, in Monaco.
"But then we came back to our original problems and a lack of performance.”
McLaren opted to spend the Friday practice sessions to try and solve the aerodynamics problems that weren't detected in the wind tunnel. These are fundamental problems, not details.
“I think now after investing three or four Friday FP1s, doing just aero development and aero understanding, we know that maybe we compromised a little bit the race weekend and the performance in qualifying but we get a lot of information on those Fridays.
"I think now we are in a point of we know exactly what to do.”
However, these things aren't for this year's car. Alonso said that "70%" of the knowledge the team is acquiring now is for next year, as it takes multiple months for the team to fully understand and implement the newly won data.
“We had basically one upgrade this year in Barcelona," Alonso continued.
"All the other races we brought small parts that they were not significant performance on it.
“Some of those parts were experimental - some of those were negative, not positive.
"We were between seventh and tenth in Australia in the beginning of the year.
"We came back from seventh to 10th in Barcelona, Monaco.
"And then we are going back, back.”
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