Vandoorne feels he has fared 'very well' against Alonso at McLaren

Stoffel Vandoorne feels he has "fared very well" against McLaren Formula 1 teammate Fernando Alonso throughout his rookie season despite being hamstrung by the performance of his Honda power unit for much of the year.

After dominating the GP2 Series in 2015 and spending a strong year in Japan's Super Formula championship last year, Vandoorne moved into F1 full-time with McLaren for 2017 amid high expectations.

The Belgian endured a tough start to life in F1, failing to score points in any of his first 10 races amid continual issues with McLaren's Honda power unit that lacked both reliability and performance through the early part of the year.

Despite being held back by the issues, Vandoorne said in an interview with the official F1 website his desire to improve and overcome the problems was only strengthened.

"With all the issues we had throughout this season I was never 'traumatised', but instead always wanted to fight the odds to get the best possible result and learn with every lap that I did in the car – even if sometimes my mileage was cut short by circumstance," Vandoorne said, reflecting on his debut season.

"In the end I guess that the rookie season thing is a bit overrated. When we come to F1 we all have years of racing under out belt and the ambitions are the same as in all the series below, because if you don't succeed there you don't make it to F1."

When asked to pick the most positive aspects of his campaign, Vandoorne said: "That I fared very well against Fernando.

"Yes, the race results were not as expected, but having a super strong teammate is a well-known value in the paddock."

Vandoorne lay ahead of Alonso in the drivers' championship until last weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix, when a run to P8 for the Spaniard saw him move two points clear ahead of the final round of the year in Abu Dhabi next Sunday.