It is up in news that Fernando Alonso said podium completions would “most likely not” be sufficient to fulfill him this year but rather he is sensible about McLaren’s desires. The 35-year-old Spaniard said he was “100% dedicated to winning”, including: “I need to be best on the planet.”
Alonso, champion in 2005 and 2006, has not won a race since 2013 accordingly of an absence of execution from his cars. He included that he had never considered joining Mercedes when Nico Rosberg resigned toward the finish of last season. Alonso, a winner of 32 grand prix and one of the biggest stars in F1, also gave a withering response to his old rival Lewis Hamilton’s recent observation that he regretted the amount of data-sharing in F1 because he felt it allowed his team-mates to learn from him. Alonso said: “If he was watching more data from Rosberg last year, maybe he would have won the championship.”
McLaren have had two troublesome seasons since the begin of their engine organization with Honda in 2015, with both frame and engine less powerful than those of title holders Mercedes. Alonso said it was implausible to anticipate that McLaren will close what was a 1.5-second crevice toward the finish of last season in one winter.
“We need to recover a huge gap,” he said. “Winning having come sixth in the previous constructors’ championship is something no-one did apart from Brawn in 2009.
“We started 2017 early enough. We put a lot of resources in this year’s car. We changed completely the philosophy of the engine, which is risky but needed if we want to win because the engine of the last two years was not good enough to win.”
He added: “I expect Mercedes to still be very competitive. We saw their new car yesterday, which seems very well elaborated, and they have the advantage of the engine. They will be contenders. I am sure the Red Bull will be up there and hopefully we can put ourselves in that group.”
McLaren have made it clear they wish Alonso to sign another agreement to keep him at the team after 2017, presumably for at any rate an additional two years.
The driver emphasized his announcements of a year ago that he trusts the new cars will see an arrival to “battling soul and racing soul”, permitting drivers to push hard at all circumstances, before he submits. What’s more, he included that he was in no hurry to decide.
