Alonso: A perfect Brazil GP will guarantee McLaren points

Fernando Alonso insists McLaren still requires the perfect race weekend without penalties or issues to ensure a points finish given its recent surge in performance over the second half of the year.

After McLaren-Honda’s disastrous start to 2017, effectively breaking its partnership with the Woking-based team set to switch to Renault engines from next season, Alonso has enjoyed somewhat of an upturn in performance but has still been continually handicapped by engine penalties and unreliability.

Having relished the team’s ‘best race of the year’ in Mexico with 10^th place despite grid drops for engine penalties, Alonso is encouraged he can battled inside the top ten in Brazil while maintaining any targets can only be set if McLaren-Honda avoids reliability woes. The Brazilian Grand Prix will mark a five-year anniversary since McLaren's last F1 win which was scored by Jenson Button.

“Definitely there is a chance while there may be some penalties going on for some of our competitors so it could be a good weekend to score points,” Alonso said. “I think lately we’ve been quite competitive and we lost big points because of reliability issues and some races we were in the points in some others we took penalties and we start at the back and we didn’t arrive to big points either.

“I think if we have a good weekend, no issues on Friday, no issues on Saturday, no issues on Sunday I think the points are guaranteed. We need to deliver that result.”

McLaren looks set to end the year in ninth place in the F1 world constructors’ championship with a 23-point deficit to nearest rival Haas, while Alonso is two points behind team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne in the drivers’ standings.