Two-time Formula One World Champion Fernando Alonso has told his team to give up on the 2015 season and to focus on developing the car for 2016 instead. Currently driving for the McLaren-Honda team, Alonso has not scored a single point in seven races so far this season. His teammate Jenson Button has only managed four points.

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 "With the position we are in and the performance we have, I think concentrating on next year is the clever option for us now," he said. Alonso spoke to Autosport ahead of this weekend's Austrian Grand Prix and shared his opinion about the team's current situation.

McLaren has teamed up with Honda this year and together, they employed two former world champions into their stable. However, neither Alonso nor Button has proven to be competitive so far this season. Button currently lies in the 17^th spot of the drivers' championship while Alonso is in 18^th. The team has bested only the struggling Marussia Team in the constructors' standings.

The top three drivers in the championship already have well over a hundred points. The Mercedes pair of Lewis Hamilton (151 points) and Nico Rosberg (134 points) have claimed the top two positions followed by Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel (108 points).

Despite having a season riddled with mechanical failures and downright lack of competitiveness on the track, Alonso says that they have made major progress. Nevertheless, he thinks that the second half of the season should be used to build upon their strategy for 2016.

His teammate Button has a more positive approach and doesn't think that they should write off the season just yet. "Obviously we've had more issues than we'd like. Hopefully we can resolve them, because otherwise the pace has been reasonably good," he said.

Despite what Button describes to be a reasonably good pace, he isn't likely to use that pace to compete against the front runners in Austria this Sunday. Autosport reports that both he and Alonso are facing heavy penalties after having used up four internal combustion engines already with just seven races icompleted so far.

Free practice 1 starts at 10:00 a.m. local time in Austria on Friday. The session officially kicks off the Grand Prix weekend which concludes in the actual race that begins at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 21^st. 

TagsFernando Alonso, Jenson Button, McLaren, Honda, Formula 1, Mercedes, ferrari, Austrian Grand Prix