AUSTIN, Texas -- Fernando Alonso says McLaren must "attack" its weaknesses in order to have a more competitive car next year.
Despite making progress this year, McLaren is still a distant sixth in the constructors' championship and struggled for performance at the last round in Japan. The team admitted the high-speed corners of Suzuka exposed weaknesses in its chassis and Alonso says that must be addressed next year.
"There are some types of corners that seem not to perform at the same level as the others, but I think we need to understand and to attack those problems, especially more thinking for next year," he said. "I think this year whatever you do will be small things that will not have a big impact, so the important thing is to put the focus into the weakness of this year's car to make sure we don't have the same problems."
McLaren has not won a race since 2012, but Alonso is confident it has made significant progress this season with engine partner Honda.
"What I'm happy with is how the team has settled with the structure that we have, with the organisation that we have, with the Honda and McLaren implications, much closer than ever in the last two years," he said. "The Honda progress as well, because last year we have a lot of difficulties, but for this year we knew that improving the engine would not be difficult because it was in a very low performance base, but I think for next year the step will be even bigger because the organisation has changed a lot.
"We have a lot more people and resources, we have a lot more ideas and everything that I see now is much more logical for next year. So even if the regulations change a lot then all of the information that we get this year is not very useful at all, then I think the team is very well prepared to attack next years regulations with a lot of confidence because the team grew up a lot in the last 15/16 months."