Alonso says things will get worse before they get better for McLaren

Alonso will start the race from 17th position, with teammate Jenson Button qualifying in 18th as both drivers missed the Q2 cut.

The Spanish driver, who has not finished a race since the Bahrain Grand Prix, insisted McLaren continues to make progress, but he reckons the next few races will be even harder for the team.

"When we arrive in Hungary in three weeks it will be the same, and when we arrive in Spa it will be the same, so if anyone's bored they should tune in in Japan or Mexico, because there will be worse races than this," said Alonso.

"We know that. The plan is for them to be worse than this, to start penalising, and to change things.

"Everything is going worse than we had expected in principle, but once we saw the situation in the third or fourth race, what we are achieving is better than expected.

"But I understand that being out in Q1 it doesn't look that way from the outside. But we are calm."

Despite the Q1 exit, Alonso labelled McLaren's qualifying performance as one of the best of the 2015.

"We have improved quite a bit," he said. "It was one of the best qualys of the year.

"I know it sounds contradictory, but we had never been 1.5 seconds off the Ferrari, which put the medium tyres, on the second longest track of the year.

"I think the gap to the first is smaller, but we have a bit of a power deficit right now and until we improve we will be suffering."