Alonso: No more excuses for McLaren in 2018

Fernando Alonso has accepted there are no more excuses for McLaren not to be competitive through the 2018 Formula 1 season following its switch from Honda to Renault engines as it looks to return to the front-end of the field.

McLaren split with Honda after three difficult years at the end of last season, with the team struggling to ninth place in the constructors' championship due to a lack of both performance and reliability on-track through the year.

The new McLaren-Renault partnership got off to a mixed start in pre-season testing as the team encountered a number of reliability issues, but Alonso preached confidence in the new McLaren MCL33 car ahead of this weekend's opening race in Melbourne, Australia.

"it’s an important season for us, with many changes on the team, especially on the power unit. It’s time to get some results for the team after three difficult years," Alonso said.

"It’s difficult to know where we are right now because winter testing is always only testing and we need to discover a little bit of things in the first few races. But we have a good baseline, a good car to work, we’ll see.

"Expectations are always high because we are McLaren and we have to deliver better results than we did in the last year and this is the season to do that."

Asked if he would accept any more excuses for a lack of on-track competitiveness, Alonso said: "No, I don’t think so.

"I understand that we are not at the level of Mercedes now or the level of Red Bull or Ferrari - or that’s what we think after winter testing - so we are not in that leading group yet.

"But we should be there in a couple of races time or in the second part of the championship or something, because we are McLaren, so we should be there.

"In 2012 we were not in that group either, and we were leading the championship in the last race, so we will see what happens this year."

Alonso is confident McLaren will make rapid progress with its car across the course of the season, believing it could complete a bigger step than the rest of the field through the year.

"This weekend will be our lowest level. We will be the team that will progress [best] compared relative to other teams, just because the integration to a new power unit will require time," Alonso said.

"The chassis has been designed and the season programmed with many updates that will come very soon, in the first couple of races.

"What we see here is going to be important, yes, but we will be better and better. I expect the second half of the season, for example, a very strong McLaren."