Fernando Alonso unsure if McLaren can compete

McLaren made solid progress in the opening races this season, culminating in Jenson Button scoring the team's first points in Monaco. Both cars have retired from the two races since then, with the Canadian and Austrian circuits not suiting the MP4-30, while also taking a number of power unit penalties.

Alonso admits he is unsure how competitive McLaren can be if it doesn't face any reliability issues at Silverstone.

"I don’t know really, it’s a question mark, also for us," Alonso said. "The performance of the car after Austria we were not sure.

"With the new aero package it feels more competitive, the car, but how competitive we don’t know because Austria was not our preferred track in terms of layout.

"It will be interesting to see this weekend if we can, first, finish the race, because after four retirements in my case I would like to see the chequered flag if possible.

"If we do so I think to see how competitive we are is an answer we need to get this weekend because we don’t know if we are 12th, if we are 17th or if we are eighth, so it’s an important weekend for us."

Alonso is also limiting his running on Friday having had to revert to a previous power unit, but Honda is set to be allowed an extra power unit this season.

"We will put some old engines to avoid some penalties here. That maybe will limit the amount of laps that we can do in free practice but we need to find quality laps, not number of laps, especially in free practice, and maximise the performance this weekend and see where we are."