28/06/2018
NEWS STORY
A week that began with talk of unrest before moving on to claims of a "toxic" atmosphere, "clueless" management and, of course, Freddo-gate, was capped when both McLarens failed to make in into Q2 and subsequently finished outside the points.
Though he has since played down his radio outburst 40 laps into last weekend's race, Fernando Alonso's call of "no brakes, no tyres, we're out of the points... I don't care too much", seemed like a cri de couer on behalf of the entire team and its fans.
However, speaking to the media in Spielberg today, the Spaniard sought to play down the situation, while criticising the journalists for emphasising the negatives.
"A weekend like that, the only problem is the media attention it attracts and the lack of normal conversation goes into the bad news or good news, and everything is exaggerated, especially in Formula One with all the polemics and all the things you need to sell every week," he said.
"We had a quite poor weekend in terms of performance," he admitted, "uncompetitive on Friday, uncompetitive on Saturday, uncompetitive on Sunday.
"We are the first ones to know that, and we want to improve that. At the same time, we are not last. We are not getting worse and worse. We are not the worst team in the paddock. We are not these things that we've been hearing for the last three days.
"We are fifth in the Constructors' Championship, and I'm eighth in the drivers' championship," he continued.
"All the other ones that are doing a perfect season, they are behind us, so maybe they are not so perfect and we are not so bad.
"We understand we have been uncompetitive, and we are the first ones that we want to improve that."
Even more feisty than usual, the Spaniard was in no mood when reminded that last year the team had claimed it had the best chassis and was losing out courtesy of Honda.
"We had zero points last season," he snapped, "and now we have fifth in the Constructors' Championship and eighth in the drivers' championship. So again, the situation changed a lot and improved a lot. We are not where we want to be, and we want to improve.
"We want to fight for podiums, we want to fight for championships," he insisted. "We were thinking this year could be that transition to be close to the podiums and close to the Red Bull performance and we are not. We realise that, and we accept that we need to improve.
"If this was the season to improve, yes, it was, and we did improve massively. 400 or 500 percent more points than last year, so we are doing what we can."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Spielberg, here.