Fernando Alonso has explained his comment to Spanish television yesterday that McLaren has to beat “three Ferrari teams” in Formula 1.

Ferrari’s two power unit customers are Haas and Sauber. Haas sources the maximum allowed number of components from Ferrari the rules allows, while Sauber produces more of its own parts.

The two Haas drivers and Charles Leclerc’s Sauber made it into Q3 at the expense of Alonso yesterday. Alonso believes the teams’ relationships with Ferrari has helped them improve.

“It’s not simply that Haas and Sauber are ahead of the midfield group,” he said. “They benefit, definitely, [from] some of the experience Ferrari has.”

The McLaren driver previously described Haas’s car as a ‘Ferrari replica’. He said yesterday those remarks about Haas were a “copy and paste” of overlooked comments others made about the team during winter testing.

“I say that like everyone says that,” he told media including RaceFans. “In Australia I said something about the Haas and it seems that only Alonso said something about the Haas.”

However Alonso claimed Haas and Sauber’s improved performance this year is a positive development for the sport.

“It’s good for Formula 1 and for them that with the small budgets or less resources they are still being competitive,” he said.

“We don’t see the Sauber we saw in the last couple of years. This is more the Sauber we saw with Perez and Kobayashi in 2012. Sergio was doing a couple of podiums, I don’t know if this year it will be possible to do a podium or not with the Sauber but definitely they are going in the right direction.”

McLaren and the other midfield teams cannot take it for granted they will reach Q2, Alonso added.

“Definitely it is a motivation for McLaren and for the other teams to keep working hard. We know there are no small teams anymore.

“Being out of Q1, it can happen for anyone. [Yesterday] it was a Renault out in Q1. That was unthinkable in Australia or China. I think quite good news and quite interesting for the sport.

“Every weekend is quite close and no one is safe to be out of Q1 any more. That’s good news for everybody.”

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2018 F1 season