Alonso expects McLaren to be more competitive in 2019

Fernando Alonso believes that McLaren will begin to turn the tides and become more competitive next season. The two-time champion has had a torrid time since rejoining the team in 2015, enduring unreliability and slow cars for season after season.

Alonso will retire from Formula One after 17 years in the sport and two world titles back in 2005 and 2006 that should have been a total he added to throughout his career.

Instead, he will focus on achievements outside of F1, mainly earning an Indy 500 race victory which would put him in elite company with Graham Hill as the only driver to complete motorsport's Triple Crown.

Alonso however believes that his current team will be able to turn it around and have a better car next season after taking unfortunate steps in the wrong direction in their development path in recent years.

“It’s a private thing in the team,” he told Formula1.com, “but definitely we took some directions in this project that were not giving the results we expected. Some compromises were made in the car for a lot of hopes on performance.

"They were not coming, so we only took the downside of those decisions. So next year should be much better and the lesson is taken.

“I think the car is definitely going to be more competitive next year. From July, we’ve been testing experimental parts (for) next year. I think there’s a lot of optimism in the team with the direction the car took in the last couple of months. We understood our problems.

“We know that last year, the car was very competitive on the chassis side. We know that – we have the GPS to compare, we have our speed in the corners. We lost some of that competitiveness this year, we understood why. I think next year, the team will be in a much better position and I’m happy for them.”