Fernando Alonso says he’s excited to see what improvement McLaren-Honda can make in Bahrain following steady progress between each of the three opening races of the season.
The team have gradually closed the gap to the midfield with each passing race weekend and Bahrain offers their best hopes of escaping Q1 for the first time.
In Australia the team were 2.8 seconds off the best time set in Q1; in Malaysia the gap was 2.3s, and in China it was 1.7s. Whilst some of that can be explained by differing track lengths, it shows clear progress.
Heading to the fourth race of the 2015 season, Alonso says he’s ready to knuckle down and help maximise the teams potential.
“Now, we go to Bahrain, and our aim is to keep building on this momentum with reliability, and of course to keep pushing for gains in performance, as we have been doing every weekend,” he explained.
“In Australia, Malaysia and China we have seen big improvements each weekend, and although these two races are back-to-back, we will arrive in Bahrain and begin working on set-up straight away to maximise our potential at this circuit.
“This will be a challenging track for our car, for sure, but our first aim is to finish the race and take away as much data as possible to prepare ourselves for Barcelona onwards,” he added.
“We are certainly seeing progress all the time and the car feels great to drive, so we have a good base to keep developing. I’m looking forward to seeing what this race brings and getting the most from the weekend in every session.”
