Fernando Alonso says McLaren suffered "too many problems" during the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.
Alonso had a relatively clean weekend but the same cannot be said for team-mate Jenson Button, who had two stoppages on Friday, missed qualifying altogether and then failed to start the race due to a recurring issue. Alonso drove to 11th, his best result since re-joining McLaren, and he says finishing was the most important thing with only one car in the race.
Asked if he was disappointed to miss out on points, he replied: "No, I think we have to be realistic. It's good for the team to finish the race with one car. Unfortunately Jenson could not finish the race so it was important to do as many laps as possible for extra experience. We now have three weeks at home to improve performance and reliability because know it is not good enough and we proved this weekend there is a lot of work to be done, but optimistic for the future."
Alonso says McLaren has a lot of work to do in three weeks before his home race in Spain.
"We knew we were weak in some areas of the car. In terms of reliability we had too many problems always repeating, so there are a lot of actions now in the next couple of weeks. It's sad for Jenson because he prepared the race in the best way, and also the mechanics, the engineers, everyone who works late until the race starts. Hopefully we cannot repeat these kind of things and we are more competitive and more strong next time."