Fernando Alonso will turn his back on Formula 1 at the end of this season, but the Spaniard is adamant that next year McLaren will have a far better package as they know what went wrong this year while continuing to insist that last season they had a superb chassis.
Alonso told Motorsport-Total, " I think the car will definitely be more competitive next year. We learned our lessons. I'm optimistic and happy for them."
McLaren has fallen on hard times, once a mighty power in Formula 1, but these days even with a driver of Alonso's calibre they have produced a lemon of a car which has done them no favours.
Th 37-year-old explained how focus on 2019 began months ago, "We've been experimenting with parts for next year since July. The team has a lot of optimism about the direction the car has taken in recent months, and we've understood our problems."
"It's an internal thing in the team, and in this project, we went in directions with unexpected results. We made some compromises on the car, hoping for an improvement in performance, but it did not come to us," lamented the two times F1 World Champion.
Last year with Honda power bolted to the back of the McLaren's the team claimed they had the best chassis, at least on par with Red Bull and promptly ditched their lucrative Honda deal for a customer Renault deal which they believed would put them back at the front.
How wrong they were, instead they are arguably worse off, but Alonso continues to insist that the MCL32 of 2017 was the business, "We know the car was very competitive on the chassis side last year."
"We have the GPS data and our cornering speeds. It was in certain areas definitely very competitive. Unfortunately, we lost that level this year, but we understand why that is," revealed Alonso who, along with 'fired' Stoffel Vandoorne, will make way for Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz at McLaren in 2019.
Big Question: What's Fernando on about?
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