Alonso: Media exaggerate everything especially in F1

At the French Grand Prix last weekend, for the first time this year neither McLaren drivers made it beyond Q1 during qualifying. In the race, there were no points for Stoffel Vandoorne who finished 12th while Alonso endured his third DNF of the season.

During his session with reporters at Red Bull Ring on Thursday, Alonso was asked if he believed McLaren could still be a force this year, the Spaniard replied, "A weekend like that, the only problem is the media attention it attracts."

"There is a lot of exaggerated tension in the media. The lack of normal conversation goes into the bad news or good news, and everything is exaggerated, especially in Formula 1 with all the polemics and all the things you need to sell every week."

"We had a quite poor weekend in terms of performance, uncompetitive on Friday, uncompetitive on Saturday, uncompetitive on Sunday. We are the first ones to know that, and we want to improve that."

"At the same time, we are not last. We are not getting worse and worse. We are not the worst team in the paddock. We are not these things that we've been hearing for the last three days.

"We are fifth in the constructors' championship, I'm eighth in the drivers' championship. All the other ones that are doing a perfect season, they are behind us, so maybe they are not so perfect and we are not so bad. We understand we have been uncompetitive, and we are the first ones that we want to improve that."

One of the reasons McLaren ditched Honda was that with Renault power the decision makers at Woking expected to be in with a winning chance but, obviously, this has not transpired.

Notably, the Spaniard was decidedly irate when facing the media in Spielberg, at one stage berating a journalist who questioned why McLaren blamed Honda for their problems last year.

Alonso explained, "We had zero points last season, and now we have fifth in the constructors' championship and eighth in the drivers' championship. So again, the situation changed a lot and improved a lot. We are not where we want to be, and we want to improve."

"We want to fight for podiums, we want to fight for championships. We were thinking this year could be that transition to be close to the podiums and close to the Red Bull performance, and we are not."

"We realise that, and we accept that we need to improve. If this was the season to improve, yes, it was, and we did improve massively, 400 or 500 percent more points than last year, so we are doing what we can," added Alonso whose forte is clearly not maths!