Alonso: Australia will be McLaren's worst race

Fernando Alonso is confident that the only way is up for McLaren in the 2018 Formula 1 season. The team found their new Renault engine difficult to integrate in pre-season, but Alonso expects an upward trend after a potentially difficult Australian Grand Prix.

Alonso is yet to take to the podium since returning to McLaren in 2015, having endured three miserable years with an unreliable and underpowered Honda power unit.

However, a switch to Renault offers hope of improving, Red Bull won three races last season using the French manufacturer and McLaren have regularly spoken of having one of the best chassis on the grid.

Alonso is happy to accept if wrinkles need ironing out in Melbourne this weekend, but he says McLaren must quickly raise their aim.

"This weekend will be our lowest level," Alonso told reporters.

"We will be the team that will progress [the most] compared to other teams, just because the integration to a new power unit will require time.

"The chassis has been designed and the season programmed with many updates that will come very soon, in the first couple of races.

"Obviously it's an important season for us, with many changes on the team, especially on the power unit. It's time to get some results for the team after three difficult years.

"It's difficult to know where we are right now because winter testing is always only testing and we need to discover a little bit of things in the first few races.

"But we have a good baseline, a good car to work, we'll see. Expectations are always high because we are McLaren and we have to deliver better results than we did in the last year and this is the season to do that."