Alonso: No magic but we’ll try our best

Editor

Fernando Alonso says McLaren can copy some of their rivals' ideas, which would be a "free" performance upgrade for 2016.

The double World Champion is adamant McLaren-Honda can take a massive stride forward next season.

He recently spoke of the possibility of the team gaining "2.5 seconds" in the off-season which he feels could put them on the winning path.

Asked in Thursday's press conference how that could be possible, he said: "The lack of performance we have in some areas of the car is from quite fundamental issues.

"They have not too difficult solutions.

"We need to copy some of the directions that everyone has apart from us.

"There's some time we can recover with not much penalty because others already have it in their package.

"Some of our performance gain will be more free, let's say."

The Spaniard, though, concedes McLaren's rivals won't be resting on their laurels so it is up to the Woking team to make even bigger gains.

"But it is true that the competition will be working hard all winter and will recover a couple of seconds too, so we need to make extra.

"But we feel optimistic and confident that we will be very competitive.

"We are realistic at the same time, we understand that in F1 there are is no magic.

"In one year, going from being out in Q3 to fighting for the championship is very, very optimistic – but we will try our best."