Fernando Alonso believes his charge to seventh place in Formula 1 qualifying for the Spanish Grand Prix prove♚s McLaren's belief that it has one of the most competitive chassis on the g𝓰rid.

Following a torrid start to the season that has seen him fail to score a single point or see the chequered flag, Alonso stunned the F1 p🔜addock by dragging his McLaren-Honda MCL32 to seventh place in Barcelona on Saturday.

Alonso's result was made all the more impressive by the fact that his top speed💝 through the speed trap was the 19th-fastest of the session - only faster than that of team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne - and some 12 km/h down on leader Sebastian Vettel.

Speaking after the session, Alonso said the result acted as evidence of McLaren's long-held belief that it has one of the st✱rongest chassis in F1, with the majority of the time lost being down to the power unit.

"It's still nearly two seconds from pole position so it's still a big gap," Alonso said. "But we know how much we are ﷺlosing from the power unit.

"So I think from the chassis side we more or less confirmed what we thought at the beginning of the year and the first races - that we are quite competitive and we are hap🔴py with the things that are happening on the chassis side.

"It's🌺 still not the best, I still think there's some work to do aerodynamically and mechanically💛. I think we need to keep working to be at the level of Mercedes and Ferrari who definitely are a little bit ahead of everyone.

"But we could be righ🍌t behind them in terms of chaꦛssis."

Alonso recognised that the less power-hungry nature of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya played into his ༒han꧟ds, allowing McLaren to fight higher up the order.

"I think we came from two difficult circuits. 🐈Bahrain and Russia the power sensitivity there is quite high so we struggled a little bit more," Alonso said.

"Here is I think the fourth or the f🎀ifth-lowest, so we benefit a bit for that. Monaco I guess will also be a good opportunity for the team, Hungary and Singapore, so the nor🔯mal circuits with low power sensitivity.

"Today we executed the qualifying well, the car was performing well, the conditions were tricky - quite windy - but I felt good with the car, confident. The last couple of laps w🎃ere good enough to be in Q3 and🎀 then good enough to be P7.

"It was close, 0.1s f♔or three or four cars, so we knew t🅺hat we needed to put a perfect lap together and today was one of those days when everything went our way and everything went fine."