Fernando Alonso says he is "incredibly motivated" for the new season, though he is braced for a difficult opening race for McLaren in Australia.
Alonso was a vocal critic of McLaren's engine supplier Honda during a farcical pre-season littered with reliability issues and a lack of performance from its power unit. With Honda lacking upwards of 30 km/h down the straights its F1 boss Yusuke Hasegawa has admitted the manufacturer is "a little scared" of the performance gap going to Melbourne.
Though Honda hopes to have an upgraded engine spec in Australia to the one it used in the second week in Barcelona's tests, Alonso is not expecting a huge step forward.