Fernando Alonso has called on McLaren to make the next “step forward” after he and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne recovered from poor qualifying positions to finish in the points in Bahrain.
The Spaniard was his usual attacking self off the start, moving ahead of Lewis Hamilton on an opening lap which saw him move up from 13th on the grid to eighth, a position he would then maintain to the finish.
Once again it highlighted the British team’s pace on a Sunday, as he sat behind Nico Hulkenberg for the entire race but the double world champion admits the lack of single lap performance is currently too detrimental.
“We need to raise our game because it’s not enough at the moment,” he told Sky Sports. “Definitely we need to improve and make a step forward. So far on Sundays, we are delivering the result but we need to be a step ahead.
“The qualifying was too poor and the starting positions were compromised because of that. We need to find more pace.”
His second points result in a row actually jumps Alonso ahead of Daniel Ricciardo into fourth in the drivers’ championship with 15 points while Vandoorne’s total of seven means McLaren is only eight shy of their complete 2017 total.
“Fifth in Australia, seventh here, 10 points there, six here. We would have taken 16 points before starting the championship in Barcelona, so I’m very happy about that,” the 36-year-old added.
The only embarrassment for McLaren was Alonso ended the race some 48 seconds behind the Honda-powered Toro Rosso of Pierre Gasly in fourth.
