Alonso confident McLaren '100 per cent' ready for Melbourne

Fernando Alonso is sure McLaren are "100 per cent" ready for the Australian Grand Prix. After a high-profile switch from Honda to Renault power, McLaren suffered more reliability issues than any other team in pre-season, but Alonso is already targeting success in 2018.

Both Alonso and team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne suffered numerous breakdowns in Barcelona, with McLaren completing fewer laps than any other team.

Compounding their misery, Toro Rosso enjoyed almost ceaseless performance from the Honda engines that had frustrated McLaren so much over the last three years.

However, Alonso remains positive about the season to come, having set the third-quickest time of pre-season on the final day and with McLaren hoping a season-opener on a less power-hungry track in Melbourne could help them set strong foundations.

"Well, I think we should be optimistic," Alonso told Reuters.

"I think we had some reliability issues in testing but all of them are fixed now and the team did an amazing job in the past two or three weeks to have the car 100 per cent for Australia.

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"I think being in the points, being close to the top five, I think that will be the best thing we can do to start the season.

"We need this good result to motivate the team and to keep working for the rest of the season."

Alonso says McLaren are looking to pull up to the rear of the title fight in 2018 and even hopes the team can challenge Mercedes' dominance of F1 sooner rather than later.

"I think top four is definitely a target for us," said Alonso.

"We know that Mercedes is a little bit ahead of everyone and is dominating the sport for the last four years and they are the big favourites again to start the new season. But then we have Red Bull, we have Ferrari and definitely McLaren has to the next team on that order.

"It's always important to have some competition in any sport.

"I think competitions and close fights will attract more people and will make the championship more interesting but I don't think that's any problem with Mercedes' dominance. They did a better job than the others in the last couple of years.

"So it's up to us to improve and to race our game and hopefully beat them very soon. And McLaren is probably one of the teams that can do that in the future, in the near future.

"And hopefully that near future is soon and even this year."