The car was driven by 2005 and 2006 World Drivers' Champion Fernando Alonso and 2009 World Champion Jenson Button, and reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne, who replaced Alonso at the Bahrain Grand Prix following the Spaniard's accident at the Australian Grand Prix which deemed him unfit for the next event.

After a generally much better pre-season in terms of reliability than the year before, the team headed to the Australian Grand Prix with progress made to the Honda power unit.

With a few cars in front of him making a free change of tyres as a result of the red flag, Button struggled through to finish 14th.

The team once again had Alonso into Q3 at Monaco, albeit in another tenth place, but he rose to ninth after Kimi Räikkönen's five-place grid penalty for a gearbox change.

Eventually, with good timings to pit for different sets of tyres in changeable conditions, Alonso managed to fend off Nico Rosberg in the much faster Mercedes to finish fifth, his joint best result since rejoining McLaren, and outscoring his points tally of last year.

The race however, was disappointing and branded as forgetful, as Button once again succumbed to early reliability woes by having an engine failure, and Alonso finished just outside the points in 11th, having lost time on pit-stops and also lack of pace with the car.

At the newly introduced Baku City Circuit, the cars showed good pace in the first free practice sessions but Alonso and Button qualified a disappointing 14th and 19th respectively.

At the Red Bull Ring, Austria, the team was expected to struggle for performance due to the high speed nature of the track.

Button managed to finish in 6th place after faster cars such as Red Bulls and Ferraris overtook him and Alonso retiring from the race during the final couple of laps due to an energy storage battery failure.

While not troubling the faster Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari cars, Alonso was able to keep the Toro Rosso of Sainz a comfortable distance behind him and finished in 7th.

Button capitalised on Bottas slowing drastically at the end of the race (as a result of a two-stop strategy) to move into 8th on the final lap.

Button managed to qualify in 9th and Alonso had an engine failure and failed to set a time which relegated him to the back of the field alongside his former teammate Lewis Hamilton who was penalised with a 55 place grid penalty.

But the car struggled and Button qualified 13th after damaging his left-rear wheel from a tap with the wall but started 12th due to Pérez being issued a five place grid penalty.

Button retired from the race on lap 43 due to brake issues caused by a start-line collision with Bottas whilst trying to avoid Hülkenberg, who crashed out.

The weekend was pretty encouraging for McLaren as they had endured difficult times at their engine supplier's home race in Japan, only for them to slip outside the points again in Mexico with 12th and 13th place for Button and Alonso respectively.

During the rain-soaked race, Alonso finished 10th after recovering from a spin to overtake 7 cars from 17th while Button again struggled with the balance and wound up in 16th place and last.