Fernando Alonso believes McLaren is on the right path to catch up with the top three teams in Formula One, but says there are no more excuses left for the team.
After spending most of the past three years blaming former engine partner Honda for its lack of competitiveness, McLaren was hoping to return to the front this year by switching to Renault power over the winter. But from the very first race in Australia it was clear the new MCL33 was lacking one-lap pace compared to its rivals and over the first four races the average gap to pole position was 2.360s.
A significant upgrade at the Spanish Grand Prix cut the gap to pole to 1.548s at the Circuit de Catalunya two weeks ago, but Alonso was still outqualified by the Haas of Kevin Magnussen. What's more a 0.905s gap to the fastest Renault-powered car -- Max Verstappen's Red Bull -- underlined the size of the challenge still facing McLaren.
Alonso is optimistic the latest MCL33 upgrade has put the team on the right development path, but says the onus is on McLaren to close the gap to Red Bull over the rest of the season.
"I think it will depend on us," he said. "It's not like in the past [with Honda] when we needed a mix of a lot of things to get it right; we were missing reliability, we were missing race pace, and 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, the chassis development, to close that gap.
"We are motivated to do that. We are in the right direction. I think the new package is delivering what we expect from it. That's always a good boost in confidence for everyone in the factory, for all the plans they have for the next races.
"We know we are in the right direction. Let's see what we can do during the season. We need to score points every Sunday. We've been doing that quite good so far."
McLaren racing director Eric Boullier played down the importance of the Spanish Grand Prix upgrade, saying his team needs to continue to improve at every round to close the gap to the front.
"Like Fernando said, we know what we need to do," Bouller said. "We had to improve the reliability, we had to improve the performance. We have now some other teams using the same power units, so at least we have some references. This is what we are working on. It's a long way to go.
"Barcelona was another step, but any future races, we keep bringing development. Modern Formula One is not about bringing a magic package. It's bringing step by step and incrementally a lot of performance through the season. Everybody is doing the same. We have to work harder than the others to get where you want to be."