Alonso points out major flaw with McLaren

McLaren’s straight line pace still remains a huge concern for Fernando Alonso, as the Spanish endured considerable difficulties whilst trying to overtake Leclerc in Barcelona.

While the switch from Honda to Renault has given McLaren a boost in reliability, they seem to be lagging behind in straight line pace.

“I was half of the race behind Leclerc and definitely it was difficult,” said Alonso.

“We are still lacking some straight-line speed to be able to overtake so it’s something we are working on. We know our weakness on the car and hopefully we find solutions quite soon.” he added.

All Renault cars were slow with their straight line pace, and McLaren have urged Renault to come up with engine upgrades as soon as possible.

The next performance upgrade is expected before the Canadian GP in June.

However, Red Bull are performing exceedingly well with the Renault engine(at least when Max and Ricciardo don’t crash into each other), and hence Alonso believes that the onus is now on McLaren to dish out a fast enough car.

“It’s not like in the past that we need to mix a lot of things to get it right. We were missing reliability, we were missing race pace, sometimes deployment, sometimes aero, sometimes mechanical grip. There were many things to fix.

“Now we know that on the power unit side we have the same engines as Red Bull so it’s all on us, on the chassis development, to close that gap. We are motivated to do that.

“We are, I think, on the right direction, The new package is delivering what we expect from it. That’s always a good boost of confidence for everyone in the factory for all the plans we have in the next races.” he concluded.