Alonso hails McLaren progress, but big three remain out of reach

Fernando Alonso praised the progress made by McLaren after he took part in the top-10 shootout for the first time in 2018 at the Spanish Grand Prix. Alonso will start his home race in eighth, but says Formula 1's leading teams remain "in another league" to McLaren.

McLaren's struggle to implement the Renault power unit had left Alonso and team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne fighting for points, although the Spaniard has scored in all four races this season, while McLaren are the only team to have both cars finish every grand prix in 2018.

Alonso is the only driver to outqualify his team-mate at every race this year and the veteran is looking forward to Sunday's race after McLaren's raft of upgrades paid dividends.

READ MORE: Hamilton 'needed' Spain pole
READ MORE: Hartley targets Barcelona points

"I'm happy with that. P8 is a good position, I've been P13 the last three qualifying sessions," two-time drivers' champion Alonso told Sky Sports.

"We definitely made a step forward at this race. Everything that we bring to the track is delivering the expectations and the lap times that we were expecting from them.

"That is a positive thing, the correlation with the factory. We just need more new parts and as soon as possible.

"Probably the downside of this position is still the gap to the top six. They are in another league and we need to keep chasing and closing that gap race after race.

"Definitely this package is making me happy. This car was supposed to be the Australian GP package but we have brought it here to Spain.

"That delay on the first improvement and not having it in the first race probably put us in a difficult position in the first couple of races. We saved them with a lot of points on Sundays with a little bit of luck and good races.

"But from now on we need to push the development and bring new parts every single race."