Fernando Alonso was determined to give McLaren a good result to shout about at Monaco on the weekend of the team's 50th anniversary.
The Spanish driver succeeded in bringing home his McLaren-Honda in P5 but conceded that his afternoon of racing in the Principality had been a difficult one as he continued to struggle with the balance of his MP4-31.
"It feels good, because it's always a satisfaction when you execute a difficult race, and this one was one of those," explained Alonso.
"It was tough from the beginning, zero visibility behind the safety car, and then we switched to inters guessing what the grip would be because they were the first laps in wet conditions of the weekend.
"And then the most difficult thing was switching to dry tyres, the track was one metre wide because there was only a dry line – and if you put one centimetre of the tyre on the wet part you will crash, this is Monaco.
"That was tough. It was the same for everyone, we tried to keep it on the track, and the fifth place tastes very good and gives us some confidence for the future and to keep improving."
Despite the good result, Alonso insisted on the specific circumstances which always prevail at Monaco, believing one should not draw any real conclusions on the McLaren's true level of performance.
"This is a very unique circuit so we don't need to read too much into the results here. And in the race there was a bit of chaos with the rain.
"I think we got everything right today and we deserve P5, but the level of speed and pace we had all weekend wasn't enough. There's still a long way to go for us but we're clearly moving in the right direction."
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