Alonso: We have to respect McLaren's performance

McLaren are edging closer to Aston Martin's fourth place in the F1 Constructors' Standings, and are now 11 points behind, as the papaya cars continued to improve while the green ones' continue to struggle to recapture their early season form.

What makes matters more difficult for Aston Martin is that they can only rely on the points Alonso scores with Lance Stroll still in no man's land, while McLaren have Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri scoring points.

That was the situation again in the Qatar Grand Prix, where Alonso finished sixth bagging eight points, while also scoring an extra point in the Sprint race finishing eighth, while Stroll was 11th in the grand prix, 15th in the Sprint.

Alonso was satisfied with his team's performance in Qatar, which he believes was an improvement over the past couple of races.

He said in Aston Martin's race report: "We were competitive though and I'm happy to finish sixth after a few weekends where we didn't have the pace. We finished ninth in Monza, eighth in Japan and here I felt like we were in the mix."

The conditions of the race were quite hot and humid, with many drivers suffering exhaustion and dehydration, and while the 42-year-old Alonso seemed fine after the race, he had to deal with an additional inconvenience of an extremely hot seat.

He commented: "It was an extreme race today with the hot conditions and perhaps one of the toughest we've faced.

"We also had an issue with the seat being very hot from around Lap 15, which made it quite challenging. Perhaps as a sport we can think about some measures in the future if we experience these extreme temperatures again," he suggested.

Alonso was heard over the radio asking his team if they could throw some water over him in the pitstop, he told reporters: "We had something also with our seat, it was extremely hot.

So I asked for some water or something at the pit stop, that they could throw over me or something but that wasn’t allowed apparently," he jokingly added.

As for the ever-shrinking gap to McLaren, the Spaniard said: "[McLaren are] very strong and better than us. There’s nothing we can do, we just have to respect their performance and they have this momentum but we still cannot give up.

"Hopefully in the next three races we have a strong weekend, score with both cars and they have a bad weekend and then we open the gap, but at the moment it is tough," the double F1 Champion concluded.