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McLaren improving with every race - Vandoorne
By alley - Aug 8, 2017, 11:00 AM ET

McLaren improving with every race - Vandoorne

Stoffel Vandoorne believes McLaren is making progress with each passing race and will be able to replicate its double-points finish of Hungary at certain circuits.

McLaren started the season with an uncompetitive car, mainly due to a lack of performance and reliability from the Honda power unit. However, with the team continuously developing the MCL32 and Honda making improvements with its latest specification, McLaren was able to score with both cars in Hungary as Fernando Alonso finished sixth and Vandoorne 10th.

With the team's first double-points finish of the year under its belt, Vandoorne is confident there will be similar chances to score heavily after the summer break.

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"Every race we are improving and bringing new bits to the car," Vandoorne said. "Obviously there are tracks that suit us better than others with different engine-sensitive tracks. Spa and Monza are probably a bit harder for us. The more twisty tracks will suit us a bit better and it's those we have to try and take the most out of.

"We want to finish much higher, that's definitely our target. The start of the season has been difficult for us and we know there are only a couple of tracks where we have opportunities. We need to take the benefit of those, make sure we score when we have those opportunities and keep improving the package week after week."

And Vandoorne believes McLaren needs to focus on having trouble-free weekends in order to get the most out of its package, having taken grid penalties on a number of occasions this season.

"It's going to be a well-deserved break for everyone in the team. It's not been an easy start to the season. It's good to go into the summer break with points.

"If we stay out of trouble and we don't have any issues in a weekend then we can score points. When another chance like this comes up, we have to benefit from those."

The result in Hungary moved McLaren above Sauber in the constructors' championship into ninth place, with the team now sitting 15 points behind eighth-place Renault and 30 points behind Williams in fifth.

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