McLaren

Fernando Alonso's eyes will have lit up when he learned of Felipe Massa and Sebastian Vettel's demise in qualifying at last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix.

Handicapped by the limitations of McLaren's MP4-30, the two-time world champion had spent much of his first five races of 2015 racing alone, he and team-mate Jenson Button cut adrift from the pack as their employers troubleshoot the many problems with their new Honda power unit.

Those issues, unflattering at most venues this season, were magnified at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, where the long straights meant Honda's lack of efficiency and power deficit to their rival manufacturers—BBC Sport's Andrew Benson claims the engine is 20 kilometres per hour slower than that of Mercedes—were exposed.

Entering the race with little chance of scoring his first points of the campaign, Alonso would have taken comfort from being joined at the rear of the grid by two drivers with whom his career has been closely linked.

Massa, whom he partnered at Ferrari between 2010 and 2013, and Vettel, whom he battled for several world championships in that period and who ultimately replaced him at the Prancing Horse for 2015, had both been eliminated from Q1 on Saturday after being hampered by engine-related niggles.

But with two of the quickest cars in the field at their disposal, the pair were expected to charge through the field and still record strong points finishes.

For Alonso, they were a sad reminder of what he once was, what he could have been and what he should have been in 2015.

With few aspirations of his own in Canada, his plan of action ahead of the race, almost certainly, was to harm the progress of Massa and Vettel, to keep them in sight for as long as possible and, essentially, to prove a point, to remind the wider world that he—despite no longer having the results to show for it—remains the benchmark performer in Formula One.

As early as Lap 4, Alonso defended the inside line from Massa at Turn 1 with all his might before forcing Vettel to attempt an ambitious overtake at the hairpin, leading to the four-time world champion wasting time by locking his brakes and running wide at the hairpin.

As Vettel once again made his way through the pack following his early first pit stop, the German ran over the grass on the exit of Turn 7 while tracking Alonso on Lap 20 and, just seconds later, was forced to miss the final chicane as the McLaren stubbornly refused to relinquish 15th position.

Vettel finally completed the pass the following lap, having opted to follow Alonso through the final chicane and, with the aid of DRS, sail by on the main straight; he would later admit to Autosport's Lawrence Barretto and Matt Beer that he "should've been a bit smarter" in combat with the Spaniard.

In other words, Sebastian should have known Alonso was going to target him in wheel-to-wheel battle and should have possessed the self-control to prevent himself from being lured into the McLaren driver's traps. Fernando, unsurprisingly, told the same source how the battle with Vettel was "the best part" of his race. 

But it was hardly the most significant.

No, that came four laps after his ego trip with Vettel came to an end, when his race engineer urged Alonso to conserve his fuel, to which he, according to the FIA television feed, replied: "I don't want...I don't want. Already I have big problems now. Driving with this, looking like (an) amateur. So I race and then I concentrate on the fuel."

Having relished his blast from the past in racing Massa and Vettel in what was arguably his most enjoyable grand prix of the year until that point, McLaren's fuel-saving request was an unwelcome reminder of his responsibilities and his constraints.

It was no surprise, then, that Alonso responded emotionally, yet the terminology used by Alonso in rejecting the pit wall's request—implying it is he, not the team, being humiliated by McLaren's shortcomings—revealed much about his attitude at this stage of his career.

While the most successful drivers in the sport's history have embraced a team environment—the most obvious example being Michael Schumacher's reconstruction of Ferrari in the late 1990s and early 2000s—Alonso views a team as nothing more than an extension of his own brilliance.

His self-serving post-race comments to Sky Sports' Pete Gill that he prioritised having "some fun" to enhance his "motivation" almost made it ludicrous to think McLaren signed him as the face, the leader of their Honda project when Alonso, for all the talk of togetherness, is on a personal voyage.

Alonso has been the subject of much sympathy this season, having fled Ferrari just as the team returned to competitiveness, and it was fitting that on a day the first fumes of frustration with his McLaren predicament were released into the public consciousness, the Prancing Horse produced one of their most impressive performances of the season with their new hero.

As we noted after the race, starting at the back of the grid presented an alternative test of the working relationship between Ferrari and Vettel at what, despite winning in Malaysia in just their second race together, remains an early stage of their partnership.

And despite enduring a challenging afternoon—the German lost time with a delayed pit stop and scuffles with Alonso and Nico Hulkenberg—Vettel, on an aggressive two-stop strategy, still managed to finish a comfortable fifth.

In the days following the Canadian GP, Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene—who was confirmed in his role less than 24 hours after Alonso ran his last race for the Prancing Horse—reflected on the Italian outfit's progress under his stewardship in an interview with the official F1 website.

Recalling his start to life at Ferrari, Arrivabene explained how he found a "divided" team devoid of any "spirit."

He explained how his employees were "very defensive," petrified and paralysed by the years of failure and the knowledge that a single mistake or error of judgement would—like Chris Dyer, like Luca Marmorini, like Stefano Domenicali and many, many others—cost them their job.

And he explained how his first assignment was simply "to put them together again."

Six months into his first year in charge and Arrivabene's first mission has been well and truly accomplished in a process accelerated by the absence of Alonso, who has always underestimated the value of team spirit.

It is why the Prancing Horse were happy to see him become someone else's problem for 2015 and why Ferrari, for all Alonso's talent behind the wheel, are better off without him.

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McLaren head into the Monaco Grand Prix on the back of the worst start to a season in their long, proud history in Formula One.

After five races, the team that boasts 12 drivers' championships and eight constructors' titles hasn't scored a single point. Jenson Button came close in Australia, and Fernando Alonso's 11th in Bahrain looked like a promising step.

The Spaniard's display in his home race looked like another—but when he looked set to at least challenge for points, a stray visor tear-off strip lodged in his rear brake duct. As has happened far too often in 2015, he was forced to retire.

But there seems to be a renewed sense of confidence and optimism around the team as they head to the unique Circuit de Monaco.

The Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona has always been considered a good overall test of a car's abilities. There's a long straight, fast corners, medium-speed corners and—more recently introduced—some slow ones.

The McLarens qualified for the race in 14th and 15th, their best combined Saturday result of the season so far.

Jenson Button couldn't make the most of it as he endured a whole host of problems with the way his car behaved. He later revealed on the McLaren website:

My car was pretty scary to drive today: as soon as I touched the throttle, the car just snapped away from me. It was unpredictable: in low-speed corners, the car was just slow, because I got wheelspin immediately; in the high-speed stuff, it was just scary, because the rear end would snap away immediately under power.

I was talking to my engineers for most of the race to try to find out what the root of the problem was, and we switched on quite a lot of handling balance changes to try to cure it. It got a little bit better towards the end of the afternoon, but it was a pretty tough afternoon.

But Alonso had fewer problems, at least in the early laps. Benefiting from a good start, he ran comfortably in 12th before the first round of stops. He lost a couple of places when he made his own stop, but emerged in 14th—less than five seconds behind cars that eventually scored points.

His tyres were up to seven laps fresher than theirs.

From that position, he looked to have a shot at fighting for a top-10 finish at the very least. The braking issue he encountered before the halfway point put paid to this, but at least the car had shown points were possible.

This has given Alonso a shot of confidence ahead of Monaco. Speaking to Sky Sports News HQ, he said:

I think we will get points in Monaco. [In Spain] our simulations until the retirement put us in ninth place, so [that] was already the first opportunity to get the points. In Monaco it will be the second.

From now on we will always be on the limit of the 10th place for the next two or three races. Hopefully after Austria we will be more secure—seventh, eighth place I hope. That’s the target.

In theory, McLaren's chance of points in Monaco should be higher than it was in Spain. The Honda power unit pushing the MP4-30 along is, per BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, around 110 horsepower down on the field-leading Mercedes.

This should hurt more around a "normal" race track like Catalunya. The layout of Monaco, with so many slow corners and few straights, should lessen the impact of a power deficit to a reasonable degree and allow the chassis to come to the fore.

If the car was good enough to give teams like Lotus and Sauber a race around a circuit so reliant on aerodynamics and power, it should be able to do an even better job around the tight, twisty streets of Monte Carlo.

It should score points—but what if it can't?

Though a smaller team may disagree, the points themselves are irrelevant to McLaren. Echoing the sentiments of a thousand kids' football managers, it's the performance that counts.

Specifically, how they fare in qualifying and in clean-air running. Due to the slow, processional, tyre-saving nature of typical Pirelli-era Monaco grands prix, long-run practice times may actually be of more interest than race pace.

If Alonso and Button can get through to Q3 and run for much of the race in ninth and 10th, it doesn't matter if they both retire two laps from the end because they'll have proved the car is fundamentally decent.

The team and McLaren fans all over the world will be able to retain the belief that when (if?) Honda get their act together, the team will make real steps forward.

That will mean more to them than qualifying 14th and 15th and ending up with a car in 10th because four other cars broke down or crashed.

The hollow morale boost of a point or two would fade to insignificance, overshadowed by the realisation that it's far more than just a lack of power holding the team back.

It won't be a total damnation of the team's aerodynamic direction because mechanical grip—that generated by car itself, not its wings—is perhaps more important around Monaco. Here, that old favourite, "driveability," is a big factor—of both the engine and the car.

But a poor performance will show that the MP4-30 lacks some or all of the other crucial ingredients of a good car—things like balance, traction, poise and predictability.

If these failings are down to the engine, it'll prove Honda are even further away than we thought from getting their act together. If they're down to the car, it may never come good—even if Honda make the necessary steps.

After making his prediction of points in Monaco, Alonso went on to speak of the team's longer-term goals.

"The final part of the championship—even if it’s a very ambitious target, I’m very optimistic—we need to be close to the podium positions," he told Sky Sports. "The improvements and the targets on the car are to do so, so we need to make sure we deliver that."

These lofty but not 100 percent unrealistic aims will be shared by the whole team, and getting as close to them as possible is crucial if McLaren want to challenge for race wins in 2016.

The MP4-31 will, after all, be an evolution of the MP4-30, according to chief designer Peter Prodromou.

Monaco has long been a race the team have targeted—as far back as the Bahrain Grand Prix, Alonso told Motorsport.com's Adam Cooper, "Lower power effect circuits will help us at the moment. Monaco is the first circuit that we may enjoy a little bit of a better result."

If McLaren can't perform here, it will serve as proof they're even further behind than perhaps even they thought.

The impact will be felt all the way to the end of the season—and maybe beyond.

Fernando Alonso could only finish 11th in the 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix, but the two-time world champion probably took more enjoyment from last weekend's race than he did from the 2014 event.

Last year's Bahrain GP was one of the most miserable weekends of Alonso's disappointing five-year stint at Ferrari.

The Sakhir circuit's four long stretches brutally exposed the F14-T's lack of straight-line speed, and Alonso, having been out-qualified by new team-mate Kimi Raikkonen in what would prove to be a rare interteam victory for the Finn, was virtually nonexistent in the race.

While Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, behind the wheel of the dominant Mercedes cars, embarked upon one of the most thrilling wheel-to-wheel battles of modern times—a scrap that, in another year and in another car, Alonso would have been part of—the Spaniard was left to trundle his way to 11th position.

Alonso ultimately finished more than 30 seconds behind race winner Hamilton—pitiful when you consider that a safety car period created a 10-lap sprint to the finish—but his race is memorable for what happened at the end of, rather than during, those painful 57 laps.

As he approached the finish line, Alonso raised his right arm from the cockpit as he had done so often throughout his Formula One career, for those 32 grands prix victories, for those 22 pole positions and for those two titles in 2005 and 2006.

But in offering that mock celebration, marking the addition of two measly points to his underwhelming 2014 tally, Alonso had ridiculed Ferrari, the holiest, most successful team in the sport's history, when they most needed his support.

And he had insulted the stalwarts of the Prancing Horse's past: Mr Enzo Ferrari himself, Juan Manuel Fangio, John Surtees, Niki Lauda, Gilles Villeneuve, Michael Schumacher, Jean Todt and Luca di Montezemolo, who—according to F1 journalist James Allen—didn't hang around long enough to witness Alonso's gesture.

Alonso would somehow record his first podium finish of 2014 in China the following weekend and come within two laps of winning the Hungarian Grand Prix in August.

But Bahrain was—after a period of gradual decline since he came within three points of winning the 2012 championship—the tipping point in the Alonso-Ferrari relationship, the moment when the Spaniard began to accept his third title wouldn't be achieved behind the wheel of a scarlet-red car.

Less than two months after Sakhir—"shortly after" it became clear Ferrari had failed in their pursuit of Red Bull Racing's Adrian Newey, claims F1 journalist Peter Windsor—Alonso "signed an option" with a view to joining McLaren-Honda, under the impression he would be heading for bigger and better things in 2015.

So far this season, however, that has proven to be far from the case, and it was saddening to observe Alonso scrambling to unlap himself from Raikkonen, driving a Ferrari that looks ever more worthy of a championship challenge, last weekend.

While Raikkonen, seemingly waiting for his career to be put out of its misery in 2014 after enduring his worst-ever season alongside Alonso, has been rejuvenated this season, coming within touching distance of victory in Bahrain, the Spaniard's career is effectively on hold for the foreseeable future as his new employers perform massage therapy on their problematic new power unit.

For the first time since his debut season with the lowly Minardi team in 2001, Alonso remains without a point to his name after the opening four races of the campaign. He is one of five drivers—his 2015 team-mate, Jenson Button, is among Alonso's fellow no-hopers—yet to score.

He was, though, behind McLaren's best result of the season thus far in Bahrain, scraping into Q2 and equalling Button's best finish of 2015 on merit in the race.

But the first public signs of frustration emerged in Bahrain as Alonso, as per Autosport's Jonathan Noble, called for a "very deep" investigation into the technical problems suffered by Button and telling Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde the team "have to raise the level" of reliability and performance in time for his home event, the Spanish Grand Prix, in mid-May.

McLaren are renowned for their intense rate of development—the team, for instance, began the 2009 season with one of the worst cars on the grid, yet recovered to win two GPs—and the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya race had long been targeted as the weekend that would transform the outfit's season.

But racing director Eric Boullier's recent warning to Motorsport.com that "modern" F1 dictates the team "cannot expect to take a big step" in Spain is likely to leave Alonso wondering just what he can salvage from yet another wasted season as his long and winding quest to secure that elusive third world title shows no sign of reaching its conclusion.

According to Autosport's Craig Scarborough, the new Honda power unit is "radical" and innovative, which should be to McLaren's advantage, but Alonso's 2015 prospects are completely dependent on when, or even if, the team can make the engine both reliable and powerful this season.

A possible saving grace for McLaren and Alonso is that each of the teams behind Williams, currently the third-fastest outfit, are yet to realise their true potential this season, highlighted by the 38-point gap between Williams and fourth-placed Red Bull Racing in the constructors' championship.

Should McLaren therefore make decent gains over the three-week break between Bahrain and Spain and fight among that packed midfield, Alonso could very quickly make up ground on the likes of Daniel Ricciardo and challenge for regular points positions, perhaps an occasional podium and a top-seven finish in the drivers' standings.

Conversely, McLaren, Alonso and Button could find themselves cut adrift if the team's woes continue into the mid-part and even the second half of 2015, Force India produce their long-awaited B-spec car, Renault up their game to the benefit of Red Bull and Toro Rosso, Sauber maintain their form, and Lotus' Pastor Maldonado cures his allergy of points.

Neither outcome will be what Fernando signed up for last December, but as he told The Guardian upon his signing by Ferrari in 2009: "Leaving Ferrari to change team is always a step backwards. It has to be a step backwards because Ferrari is more than a team."

Those words will come back to haunt Fernando if he's forced to pull over for Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel throughout the rest of 2015.

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It was always going to be a struggle for McLaren this year, taking on a new engine manufacturer one year after Formula One introduced its new V6 hybrid power units.

Yes, Honda had an additional year to observe the other manufacturers and develop their engine, but they were also missing a year of on-track data and race experience. Through four races in 2015, those deficiencies have manifested themselves in McLaren's inability to score a point—the only team other than Manor (using a modified 2014 chassis and engine) yet to to so.

The key question for McLaren is: How quickly can they improve? By comparing some of the lap times from the first four grands prix, maybe we will be able to quantify that improvement—even if it is not always apparent from the final race results.

For example, a McLaren has twice failed to make it to the starting grid this season: Kevin Magnussen (filling in for an injured Fernando Alonso) in Australia and Jenson Button last weekend in Bahrain. To put that in perspective, the last time McLaren had two 'Did Not Start' results due to car problems in the same season was 1969, their fourth year in F1.

The team also suffered a double-retirement in Malaysia.

Ironically, McLaren's best results this year also came in Australia and Bahrain—the races where one car did not make the start—where Button and Alonso each scored an 11th-place finish.

Because the team missed so much preseason testing, though, these early races are acting as an extended test session for the team. McLaren have long been targeting the Spanish Grand Prix, the next race, as the one where they would truly be able to battle, at least among the mid-field teams.

Last weekend, per the BBC's Andrew Benson, Alonso said:

In Barcelona we should see a good step and from that moment we can start enjoying races and doing a normal development phase. This year we started very low but we hope to finish very high.

Hopefully in Barcelona we can enjoy the race a bit more, but when we will fight with the top guys is more long term.

In addition to Alonso's almost-top-10 finish, the Bahrain race marked McLaren's best qualifying performance of the year, with the Spaniard making it into Q2 for the first time. After the frenzy of the early fly-away races, the extra week before the Spanish Grand Prix and its close proximity will allow the team plenty of time to develop the MP4-30.

Looking back at the first four grands prix, though, what can we say about McLaren's improvement? Here are the gaps between the best Q1 qualifying laps for McLaren and the worst for the other teams (excluding Manor):

It is not a linear progression, with a much larger gap in Malaysia than in Australia or China, but the improvement in Bahrain is clearly evident. It was not only the first time a McLaren made it to Q2, but the first time they out-qualified anyone other than Manor.

In Spain, could a McLaren make it into Q3? Alonso would have needed to improve his best Q2 lap by almost a full second in Bahrain to have made it to the final qualifying session. In F1, that is a huge amount of time to make up.

Comparing McLaren's fastest lap with the overall fastest lap from each race, there is not the same indication of improvement:

In the end, though, being able to turn in one fast lap in qualifying or in a grand prix is not nearly as important as being able to produce consistently quick laps over a full race distance. In that respect, McLaren have clearly improved, at least relative to the cars they will be fighting in the mid-field this year.

Whereas Button finished a full lap behind 10th-place man Sergio Perez in Australia, Alonso was only four seconds away from Felipe Massa in the final point-scoring position in Bahrain.

Another jump in performance could result in McLaren scoring in Spain, but it is even more likely at the race after that, in Monaco. Last year, only 14 cars finished the race around the tight streets of the Principality. If a similar battle of attrition occurs this year, Alonso and Button will not have to worry about out-racing other cars—they will just need to keep their own out of the barriers.

All timing statistics in this article are taken from the FIA's official timing data.

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Toto Wolff has quashed rumours suggesting Mercedes star Lewis Hamilton has demanded No. 1 status in the team as part of his new contract.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Sky Sports' Craig Slater, the Silver Arrows chief has insisted that there are other factors preventing the two parties finally agreeing on an extension and that it has nothing to do with the world champion demanding certain privileges:

That’s not the case – and he wouldn’t ask for that clause because that is not what we do and I think he appreciates how we manage the team and give both drivers equal status.

It is down to the detail. We have discussed and negotiated for a long time. We have sorted out the main terms since a couple of months already and it’s just a little bit of ping-pong between the lawyers. This is the normal process.

As noted by the piece, Hamilton has been personally negotiating the terms of his new deal with Mercedes and has described the wrangle as a "pain in the backside."

But the delay has prompted rumours that the two-time world champion is looking for an edge over teammate Nico Rosberg when it comes to certain matters.

Here's how the two men compare in their Formula 1 careers to date:

But Mercedes fans should be able to sleep soundly, with Wolff confirming that the team and Hamilton should finalize the agreement "within the next couple of days or weeks."

It's been an excellent start to the season for the Brit, who has sampled victory in two of the first three races. However, the rivalry between Hamilton and team-mate Rosberg seems to be flaring up again, with the German claiming Hamilton was "compromising" his race during the Chinese Grand Prix by driving too slowly, per the aforementioned piece.

It's an eminent needle that doesn't seem to be overly concerning for Wolff, however:

You are always being judged in our fast-moving environment by the last race. If he has a good race and beats Lewis on Sunday there is no discussion anymore about his pace.

He had a couple of races which were not perfect, he didn't win, but he wouldn't be a Formula 1 race winner if he wouldn't have the strengths to fight back. I have no doubt we will see very good Sundays from Nico as well.

The pair will surely resume their rivalry at the front of the field once again this weekend, with the Bahrain Grand Prix set to play host to the latest chapter in this engrossing Formula 1 campaign. And as noted by the sport's official Twitter feed, it's a track that has previously sparked fireworks between the two Mercedes men:

It doesn't seem to be in Hamilton's nature to request certain advantages. While he could stake a fine claim as the top driver on the team, one of the key facets in the Brit's recent dominance is having a quality operator such as Rosberg pushing him hard on the race track and in the garage.

The rivalry may not be ideal for Mercedes, but to dilute it by adding labels to the two drivers would be to the detriment of each. The rawness of their duel may prompt a few hairy moments on the track, but overall, it's an edge that will ensure both drivers preserve the extraordinary levels that have allowed the Silver Arrows to dominate the top two steps of the podium.

McLaren simply couldn't continue like that.

Across the opening two race weekends of the 2015 Formula One season, the targets were set embarrassingly low for a team which remains one of the most iconic names in world motorsport.

Content to tag along at the rear of the field, circulating with no aspiration or purpose, McLaren were a shadow of their former selves.

Their drivers, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso, two men who are accustomed to fighting for podium finishes, grand prix victories and world championships, have been forced to play along with the charade.

The former's 11th-place finish in Australia, where he finished two laps behind the winner, was regarded as "a small victory for the team" by reserve driver Kevin Magnussen, according to McLaren's official website.

Both Alonso and Button toed the party line in Malaysia, informing the team's official website how it was "a nice surprise" to be able to see the rarest of beasts—cars of other teams—a quarter into the race.

Meanwhile, racing director Eric Boullier told the same source how a "significant improvement" had been made between the Australia and Malaysia weekends, despite his drivers being forced to retire well in advance of the chequered flag at Sepang.

And Alonso took it a step further ahead of this weekend's Chinese Grand Prix, telling Autosport's Ben Anderson how he feels "more happy and more proud of my job and my team doing the things we are doing now than winning a trophy."

Floundering at the back of the grid is bad enough. But pretending to take more pleasure, satisfaction and fulfillment from helping McLaren return to their feet than standing on a grand prix podium, spraying that champagne onto a herd of joyous colleagues, was borderline insulting and against the principles of motor-racing and, indeed, sport.

McLaren, a team who not too long ago did everything they possibly could to win, had suddenly decided it really was the taking part that counts.

At the root of McLaren's lack of competitiveness, and low expectations, was their new Honda power unit, which, as a result of its limited exposure in pre-season testing, was detuned across the Australian and Malaysian weekends to safeguard reliability and ensure both team and engine supplier acquired a greater understanding of the new technology.

And after the extremely tentative steps of the first two races, there seemed to be cause for genuine encouragement on Friday at the Shanghai International Circuit, to the point where the team will no longer be forced to search for positives that do not exist.

Across the opening two free practice sessions, Alonso and Button completed a combined total of 95 laps, with the latter's best time of FP2, one minute, 39.275 seconds, good enough for 10th place on the time sheets.

As per the official F1 website, Button's lap was just 0.1 seconds slower than the best time of Romain Grosjean, driving the Mercedes-powered Lotus, and 0.2 seconds adrift of the Ferrari-powered Sauber of Felipe Nasr.

Although it is notoriously difficult to examine the times of free practice sessions, the fact that Button managed to get so close to cars with the finest engines on the current grid is promising ahead of a weekend which both Boullier and Alonso had previously told Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde would be troublesome for the team.

In a sense, however, the Chinese Grand Prix and next week's Bahrain GP have come at the perfect time for McLaren.

With the Shanghai track featuring the longest straight on the calendar—the back stretch is 1,175 metres long, according to BBC Sport—and the Sakhir International Circuit having no fewer than four long straights, the team's lack of straight-line speed risked being brutally exposed over the next two race weekends.

At Sepang, after all, only Manor Marussia's Roberto Merhi, with the 2014-spec Ferrari engine, was slower than the McLarens in the speed trap, according to the FIA's data. The same was true when it came to the maximum speeds in the first and third sectors, which are mostly reliant on engine performance, as per the FIA information.

With a three-week gap between the Bahrain race and the following round in Spain—by which point McLaren, as Boullier told Crash.net, hope to be truly on the pace—the races in China and Bahrain offer the team an opportunity to throw caution to the wind and prioritise performance over reliability for the first time in 2015.

Rather than maintaining their current position, hoping to crawl to the finish on reduced power, the team, with the knowledge that substantial upgrades are imminent, would be well-advised to be more adventurous, turn the Honda engine up to its highest setting yet and, well, go for it.

Disregarding any future engine-usage penalties in favour of salvaging something—not just anything, as has been the case—from the opening phase of the season is the right way to go, and the team could reap the rewards of being a little more daring.

A points finish could be on offer for McLaren in the Chinese Grand Prix. It may just be a question of whether the team will be willing to pursue it.

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People power.

It's not a phenomenon you would normally associate with Formula One, a sport which continues to struggle painfully in terms of fan engagement.

Embarrassingly late to the social media revolution—an official YouTube channel was launched in December 2005, yet didn't upload a video for over nine years—and brazenly taking the action from the heartlands of France and Germany to empty venues in South Korea and Bahrain, there is a clear divide between F1 and the public.

In the modern era, fans are expected to shell out for pay-per-view television, to surrender to inflated ticket prices—those waving their flags from the grandstands viewed as mere decorations—and to put up or shut up.

How magnificent it was, then, to see the average F1 enthusiast play an active role in one of the most dramatic transfer sagas of recent times, one which resulted in Jenson Button retaining his seat to partner Fernando Alonso at McLaren.

Ahead of last October's Japanese Grand Prix, Button, to all intents and purposes, was a dead man walking.

Behind the wheel of yet another uncompetitive McLaren, the MP4-29, the 2009 world champion had established himself as the team's most reliable points-scorer, but he hadn't asserted his authority over rookie team-mate Kevin Magnussen, who had beaten Button on the one day the car was strong enough to reach the podium.

Indeed, on the eve of the Japanese GP, Button told the official F1 website how "there are always other options in life" and how nobody should "feel sorry for me" when, not if, he was replaced by Alonso.

Yet that race at Suzuka started something. 

A fifth-place finish, in the wet conditions he has always thrived in, marked a seismic shift in momentum as Button embarked on a run of three top-five finishes in the final four races.

And as the results built up—fourth-place in Russia and Brazil, fifth in the double-points Abu Dhabi Grand Prix—what initially seemed like Button's last stand very quickly became a crusade. A campaign. A pro-Jenson movement.

The outpouring of support for Button, still one of the most popular drivers on the grid, was unprecedented. And as a direct result of this affection, the inevitable—the British driver leaving the sport after 15 seasons—soon became the downright unthinkable.

So when, on a cold mid-December morning, Button was confirmed to lead McLaren's new Honda-powered era alongside Alonso, it was not just a personal victory for Jenson but a triumph for the wonder that is people power.

After an underwhelming start to 2015, however, which saw the new MP4-30 suffer countless reliability problems throughout pre-season testing and run toward the rear of the field for much of the opening grand prix weekends, Button may be forgiven for wishing McLaren had put him out of his misery prior to that career-saving run of form.

He couldn't be blamed if he secretly rues the support that allowed his career to live on for at least another year.

And he may regret failing to push through the threat he made at Interlagos, where, according to BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, Button implied he might not sign a contract extension even if he were offered one.

Although McLaren's current lack of performance has, for now, ended any hopes of Alonso and Button emerging as modern-day incarnations of Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, the team's gradual improvement between the Australian and Malaysian grands prix suggest the Woking-based outfit can salvage something this season.

While the season-opening race at Albert Park was merely a test of survival—and one Button, running at a reduced pace, passed despite finishing two laps down—the second round at Sepang offered promising signs for the 2009 world champion.

In his first competitive session against Alonso—the man who has in years gone by bullied drivers of the calibre of Giancarlo Fisichella, Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen into mere support roles—Button came out on top, out-qualifying the Spaniard by a 10th of a second, as per Formula1.com.

While neither McLaren driver is renowned for their one-lap pace, the fact that Button, who crossed the line seconds after Alonso completed his effort on a dry track, got the early advantage in the inter-team battle was significant, challenging the belief that the former Ferrari driver will have it all his own way this season.

Given the heat and humidity of Malaysia, the McLaren-Hondas were always bound to retire from the race, yet the fact Button was able to keep the likes of Red Bull, Force India and Lotus—three teams who, like McLaren, are still to run at their best this season—honest until the halfway stage was encouraging.

Indeed, both Alonso and Button described McLaren's race pace as a "nice surprise" to the team's official website, with the latter outlining his hope to "pick them off on a race-by-race basis" in the near future.

And that, for now, should be the team's main target.

If McLaren can make the same rate of improvement in the two-week gap between Malaysia and China as they did between Australia and Sepang, there is a possibility that the team will score their first points of the season at the Shanghai International Circuit, where the cooler conditions should be kinder to the Honda power units.

From there, it is unclear just what McLaren will go on to achieve this season.

Racing director Eric Boullier, according to Crash.net, said in pre-season that his team plans to make a leap in competitiveness when the European leg of the season begins at May's Spanish Grand Prix, which should provide a more accurate indication of McLaren's standing in the pecking order.

Should those updates prove successful, regular, solid points finishes should be the bare minimum and a top-10 placing in the drivers' standings should be on the cards for both drivers.

That might not be quite where Button and his army of admirers will want to be, but it would be a satisfactory return for a driver who for a long time looked as though he wouldn't be racing in 2015.

Some people are born winners—no matter what they choose to do in life, they find a way to be successful.

McLaren CEO Ron Dennis is one of those people. His team may be down right now, but if anyone can find a way to lead them back to the top of Formula One, it is Dennis.

Since he took over the McLaren team at the end of 1980, they have been one of the most successful Formula One constructors. In fact, since 1981, Dennis' first full season at the helm, McLaren have won 17 titles, more than any other team on the grid (Ferrari are second with 16).

But their last championship came in 2008, just before Dennis handed off his team principal role to Martin Whitmarsh. After the team failed to secure even one podium finish in 2013, Dennis announced his return for the following season.

Since then, he has shown a refreshing willingness to set aside his own ego in pursuit of victory. Although perhaps that is not surprising, given Dennis' need to win—in a 2012 interview with Motor Sport's Simon Taylor, he admitted to feeling "acute pain" when McLaren doesn't win a race.

Most notably, Dennis reconciled with Fernando Alonso—sixth on the all-time grand prix winners' list—who had a stormy one-year run at McLaren in 2007. That reconciliation paved the way for Alonso's return to the team for 2015 alongside Jenson Button, giving McLaren one of the strongest driver pairings on the grid.

Dennis also brought in Eric Boullier, fresh from a successful four-year stint as Lotus team principal, as sporting director, and negotiated the return of Red Bull's head of aerodynamics, Peter Prodromou. But so far, despite Dennis' personnel manoeuvres, the team has continued to struggle.

Although the second Dennis era got off to a flying start with Kevin Magnussen and Button finishing second and third at the 2014 Australian Grand Prix, the team limped to a second-straight fifth-place finish in the constructors' championship.

Also, despite repeated promises, a new title sponsor has yet to be signed. That problem is no doubt exacerbated by the fact that it has been more than two years since McLaren's last victory.

Meanwhile, the 2015 season has been a disaster so far. Alonso was injured in a freak accident during preseason testing and was forced to miss the first race of the year, while McLaren's new Honda engine has proved neither powerful nor reliable.

At the Australian Grand Prix last weekend, both McLarens qualified at the back of the field and then Magnussen's engine blew up on the way to the starting grid. Button finished the race, but he was dead last among the finishers, two laps down on the winning cars.

That is the bad news.

The good news is that all of those problems can be fixed. With his new signings and one of the largest budgets in the sport, Dennis has put McLaren in a position to succeed again.

Alonso will recover, Honda will continue to develop their engine, and sponsors will return once the team shows it can be competitive again.

In Australia, Button was optimistic about the new car, saying, per ESPN F1:

The basic philosophy and idea of the aerodynamics and how it works is definitely right. I haven't driven a McLaren like this before, not in the way that it works.

I'm not saying it's the quickest McLaren I have ever driven, because it's not, but in the way that it works the basic car is very good and it means we can build on it.

The return of Honda was always going to be a long-term project. Despite the connections immediately drawn with the McLaren-Hondas that won four championships from 1988 to 1991, nostalgia does not win races.

The new hybrid V6 power units are the most complex engines ever seen in F1, and it will take Honda time to catch Mercedes and the other manufacturers who have a year of racing data and development to build on. And when they do catch up, McLaren will reap the benefits as Honda's de facto works team, building their chassis and power unit side-by-side.

Dennis may not be as well-known for his patience as he is for his perfectionism, but patience is what is required at McLaren now.

For three years, from 1994 to 1996, McLaren did not win a single grand prix. In 1997, they finished fourth in the constructors' championship for the fourth consecutive season.

But Dennis' patience, particularly with his No. 1 driver, Mika Hakkinen, was rewarded when the Finn won the 1998 and 1999 drivers' titles and McLaren took the constructors' title in 1998.

Assuming Honda do not come up with dramatic improvements in the next few months, this will be McLaren's third straight season without a victory. But in a couple of years—well, Dennis sounds like he has the right mix of patience and confidence.

Last month, per NBC Sports' Luke Smith, the McLaren CEO declared: "I hope to be stood here in the not too distant future celebrating the world championships that I’m very confident we will win together, given some time."

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