Fernando Alonso says he's proud of McLaren's turnaround this season regardless of the luck involved in its Australian Grand Prix result.
The Spaniard finished fifth – one position higher than his best result from 2017 – having qualified 11th, and capitalised on Haas' double retirement and then a Virtual Safety Car, which allowed him to jump the Red Bull of Max Verstappen.
Team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne also finished in the points to hand McLaren its first double-points finish since Hungary last year, representing a turnaround in their fortunes in its first race using Renault power.
"It was a good race today, especially considering where we started," commented Alonso.
"The last couple of years have been difficult, and I think the winter has been difficult as well.
"We switched to the Renault engine quite late and the team had to react very quickly to redesign some of the parts at the rear end, and now we’ve come here and both cars have scored points – one in the top five.
"We should be proud of that, but I think there’s a lot more to come from McLaren. We didn’t maximise the full potential nor squeeze everything out of the package today.
"This is only our first race together with Renault, and some updates will come in the next few races. We can start to look ahead a little bit and Red Bull will be the next target.
"As I said before, this race is probably our lowest performance of this season as things are going to get better and better."
Alonso conceded however that some luck played a role in his fifth-place finish, adding: "Obviously, today we got lucky with the two Haas cars retiring, Carlos’ [Sainz] problem in turn nine, and then overtaking [Max] Verstappen under the Safety Car.
"Let’s say four positions came thanks to some favourable conditions, but we made no mistakes and we capitalised on everything. A perfect job from the team."
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