Fernando Alonso has warned against reading too much into his fifth-place finish at the Monaco Grand Prix, saying McLaren's true place in the competitive order is three or four places lower.
Alonso scored McLaren's best result of the year during a chaotic race at Monaco and at one stage thought he might even challenge for a podium. The Spaniard is confident his team is making progress, but warns that the true performance of the car is still a long way off the front runners.
"I think Monaco is a very unique circuit, so we shouldn't read too much into the results here," Alonso said. "The race was a little bit of chaos with the rain, but I think we got we got everything right today and we deserve the P5.
"The speed or the pace we had all weekend was probably not enough, though. There is still a long way to go for us, but we are moving in the right direction."
Alonso said his P10 qualifying performances at the last two races are a fairer reflection of how the MP4-31 stacks up against its opposition.
"We want to keep improving, the direction is OK and we can see from the latest results that we are coming into Q3 with a little more normal base.
"In the races if everything goes well we score points - maybe not always as high as fifth, but eighth or ninth is our normal position. Definitely we are moving in the right direction but there is a long way to go to catch Ferrari or Mercedes."