Fernando Alonso was positive regarding the progress McLaren and Honda appear to have made, hoping it will continue after a solid qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Spaniard was 12th fastest on Saturday, as the hope of a possible Q3 slipped away when other cars turned up their engines.
The double world champion was also forced to move back to the old engine specification after an issue on Friday, but Alonso remained confident with the performance improvements.
“I feel we did the maximum today – I’m happy with our laps, our result and our performance, in general, this weekend,” he claimed.
“We had an unexpected change of engine, and I reverted back to the old spec today, so finishing P12 and feeling competitive all through quali was positive news.
“The team is working very hard to improve our situation: we bring aero updates to every race, we bring new engine specs whenever we can, and we’re definitely moving forwards.
“We still need to improve our reliability, but hopefully we’ll see further signs in the next couple of weeks.”
Alonso acknowledged that from his place on the grid points will be in reach and was hoping for some outside help too.
“From 12th place, with a good start or a good strategy, we could be in a position to score points,” he said.
“There’s some possible rain forecast for tomorrow – if that turns out to be correct, it’ll probably open up more opportunities for us, [so] we need to be ready to take them.”
Alonso’s rookie teammate Stoffel Vandoorne was also positive while enjoying the car improvement around the circuit.
Vandoorne also thinks the team is on the right track to being back in good, competitive form.
“I think it’s been a pretty good weekend for us so far,” said the Belgian.
“The practice sessions have gone well and qualifying was more or less what we expected.
“This afternoon’s times were extremely close: it all came down to a couple of small details – with another couple of tenths, we’d have been into Q3.
“Today really shows that every improvement we bring to the car is very valuable – it all helps.
“We’re definitely headed in the right direction – every new piece of performance we bring is welcome, but we need to keep pushing.”