Despite McLaren and Honda's 2017 woes, their star driver Fernando Alonso says his season has been "very, very good" so far.
With Honda still working through performance and reliability issues, McLaren holds a lowly ninth in the standings, ahead of only Sauber, having finished in the points in only two Grands Prix.
Whilst Alonso concedes the team's season is far from desirable, he says on a personal level he is performing better than ever and hailed the first half of the year, in which he made his debut at the Indianapolis 500, as "fantastic".
"As a team we can't be happy with the season so far," said Alonso. "We were making it into Q3 normally last year, 9th/10th was our average position, whereas this year we have struggled a bit more."
He added: "But on the personal side, it has been a very very good season for me.
"With the 2017 cars, I'm able to get back again to my driving style, I feel much more competitive than the previous years, I'm feeling competitive out there on the track.
"I had the Indy 500 which was a nice experience, [my] go-kart circuit is going great, fantastic.
"So it's been a fantastic first half of the season."
Just a fortnight prior to these comments, Alonso was asked what his highlight of the season was, to which he replied: "The Indy 500."
When asked if he had others besides that, he added: "No. We expected to be much more competitive and we are not delivering what our expectations were."
Discussion about this post