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Fernando Alonso believes he’ll be in the hunt to continue his point-scoring start to the 2018 Formula 1 world championship despite missing out on Q3 again this season.

The McLaren driver will start from 12th on the grid at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, promoted from his qualifying position of 13th with Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg’s grid penalty for a gearbox change, and is relishing another chance to fight up the order to maintain his 100% points record in 2018.

After a frantic race last year at the Baku City Circuit saw Alonso go from 20th on the grid to finish ninth, the two-time F1 world champion doesn’t feel he’ll need help from multiple issues ahead of him to climb up the order.

Alonso has retained strong faith in McLaren’s race pace which has looked a step sharper compared to its qualifying pace in 2018, having failed to reach Q3 for the fourth successive round this weekend, after switching to Renault engines for this season.

“I don’t think that we need to wait for something too crazy in front of us like last year,” Alonso said. “I started last [in 2017] and I scored two points in the race because the race was crazy and I stayed out of trouble.

“Tomorrow I start 12th and if you do a good start there are a few cars in front of us on the ultrasofts that they went into Q3 with like the Renault cars and the Force Indias so I think quite quickly in the race we will be in the points already so we don’t need anything crazy to score points tomorrow.

“If something that happens in front of us and we are able to stay out of those problems then there can be even bigger points. Let’s see but tomorrow is a good opportunity for us to score points and an even opportunity than previous races.”

After Alonso produced his best result in over 18 months in F1 with fifth place in Australia, the McLaren driver has maintained his points run with back-to-back seventh places in Bahrain and China – seeing him already outscore his entire 2017 points haul racing under the McLaren-Honda banner.