Alonso: Upgrades puts McLaren on right path

Fernando Alonso believes McLaren is on the right path to catch F1's Big Three, but says there are no more excuses left.

McLaren's start to the season, was slow despite changing to Renault from Honda over the summer, the new MCL33 was severely lacking in one-lap pace over the first four races.

A significant upgrade in Spain, cut the gap to pole position from 2.36 seconds to 1.548 seconds, but Alonso was out qualified by Kevin Magnussen's Haas.

"I think it will depend on us," he said.

"It's not like in the past 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."