Alonso: Nothing went wrong, this is just where McLaren is

Fernando Alonso has been discussing McLaren's dreadful qualifying attempt for the French Grand Prix at Circuit Paul Ricard, and claimed that there was no technical issue in a session where both cars went out in Q1

Alonso and his team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne were way off the pace and could only manage 16th and 18th respectively in the session, one that was dominated by Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton, who claimed pole.

After the highs of winning Le Mans last week Alonso has been brought back down to Earth swiftly as McLaren's lack of competition became obvious, and he claimed that, unfortunately, the cars finishing roughly where they expected.

Speaking to Sky Sports after the race, the Spaniard said: "Nothing went wrong. The performance is what it is. It's the place we are. This morning we predicted P14 or P15, so this is what we are.

"Our average position is P15, our level of competitiveness is not what we want. We were on the border [of going out in Q1] in Canada. Nevertheless we were in the points in the last seven races without the technical issues, so we will see."

Vandoorne also attempted to discuss the issues and stated that the team must simply continue to work hard and try and redress the problems, after what had initially looked to be a positive start to the season.

The young driver added: "There's a lot of work going on behind the scenes to investigate what is not working for us. This is our poorest qualifying of the year, we need to do better and hopefully tomorrow we can reverse this result today."

Mercedes secured a confident one-two at the Circuit Paul Ricard, with Sebastian Vettel third and the Red Bull duo of Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo fourth and fifth respectively.