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McLaren believes it is finally seeing signs of progress with its troublesome car after a small lift in performance at the Monaco Grand Prix.

Jenson Button and Sergio Perez produced one the team's most competitive weekends of the season in Monte Carlo, although the latter failed to finish after a clash with Kimi Raikkonen.

But despite the result not being as good as it could have been, McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh thinks that the feedback from on-track performance was hugely encouraging.

"We should have had a decent haul of points, but we have made a little bit of progress," Whitmarsh told AUTOSPORT.

"The interesting thing coming here was we actually had reasonable stability under braking, and reasonable traction, which is basically where we were being killed previously.

"We haven't got enough performance yet, but we are making a bit of progress and the balance of the car wasn't bad.

"We will keep pushing until we get ourselves in a good competitive position."

McLaren is currently sixth in the constructors' championship, seven points behind Force India.