More McLaren potential but 'miracles' needed - Alonso

McLaren was able to start extracting the potential of its car during Friday practice but still needs "miracles" for a good result at the Australian Grand Prix, according to Fernando Alonso.

After a troublesome pre-season that saw running severely limited by reliability problems caused by the Honda power unit, McLaren entered the first race weekend with low expectations. Executive director Zak Brown told RACER getting out of Q1 would be a surprise, but Alonso finished FP2 in 12th place despite being limited to 19 laps.

When it was suggested the performance gives reason for McLaren to be optimistic, Alonso replied: "Yeah, I think so.

"At least we were able to run a little bit more than winter testing. Every time you go on the track you learn things. We lost a lot of time on the track in Barcelona and today we recovered some of that time and were able to test some of the new components we brought here, so I think they are working fine, that's positive. On the other side there's a lot to come from ourselves and maximizing the potential we have in the car, which is still not unlocked completely.

"We had some issues but in terms of the experience we had in winter testing, we have less issues than Barcelona so we were able to run a little bit more in FP1 and FP2. Thanks to that we extracted a little bit of the potential of the car, because obviously you are testing new things every time you go out. So positive from that aspect but definitely there is more to come and we need to keep working as we're still far away in terms of lap time."

Saying he will need to perform "miracles" during the rest of the race weekend, Alonso again highlighted the Honda power unit as the car's main weakness.

"I feel well prepared, I feel very fast – I'm very fast in the corners. When I run behind someone I catch someone in the corners by 50 meters, I lose 200 on the straights. Very frustrating."

When asked about the pecking order around McLaren having been in the middle of a competitive midfield, Alonso replied: "I really don't care.

"I don't care the order, I don't care who is in the middle pack. We want to be world champions, we want to be on podiums, we want to win races and we are quite far behind. If we are 13th, if we are seventh, we are ninth, and there is a Renault in front of a Force India... I don't care too much."