Despite his elimination from Q2 in Melbourne Fernando Alonso is expecting McLaren to push for a top-six finish at the Australian Grand Prix.
In qualifying, McLaren was locked in a close fight with Renault and Haas for the final four spots in Q3. Both Alonso and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne failed to progress into the top-ten shootout.
Alonso admitted errors on his final Q2 lap proved to be costly but he has seen enough from the car over the weekend so far to be excited by its potential for the race.
"Definitely there is a little bit more time but if you analyse everyone's lap and you put every perfect corner, you make an ideal lap it's quite difficult to get," he said. "I obviously could maybe be in Q3 but I am happy where I am -- I deserve to be P11 today, it's still a very good result in my opinion.
"The performance of the car has been going good all weekend long, you arrive from winter testing and you want to know where you are exactly in terms of pace compared to opponents. We discovered that the car was well balanced and competitive from FP1, especially in damp conditions this morning it was quite competitive as well.
"This is a very, very good baseline for the rest of the season despite the result you can get today. It is good, the points are given tomorrow... big points are coming for us tomorrow, I'm sure. This is a very good start for a new season."
When asked if "big points" meant seventh or sixth, he said: "Hopefully better."
Alonso's optimism is based on the long-run pace he saw from his car on Friday and a belief that the season-opener could throw up several retirements.
"I think the race pace is a little bit better than the qualifying pace, that's what we saw on Friday. And then maybe today our position is a little lower than the performance in the car bewcause we didn't optimise the laps. We'll see.
"Last year we saw seven retirements here so I expect the nine cars in front of us... maybe not all of them will finish. There are some interesting battles there in front of us so we need to stay calm, stay focused, finish the race and with the performance we have in the car. If we need deliver tomorrow that's part of the race."