After a disastrous three seasons, McLaren aimed to resurrect their performances in 2018, switching from Honda power units to Renault.

Despite obvious improvements, the pace of the new MCL33 has still not been enough for McLaren to battle at the front of the pack.

Fans were expecting McLaren to be one of the leading teams this season - but their early results have been rather underwhelming.

Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne qualified 13th and 14th for the Chinese Grand Prix and Eric Boullier said the McLaren team is meeting it's targets for the season.

Perhaps not setting their targets high enough for the season, Boullier aims to revise his team's ambitions.

"The car is a match for the target, so that means maybe the target was not the right one," said the McLaren racing director.

"So we need to revise in terms of ambition what we need to achieve."

'Car has no nastiness'

Boullier insisted that the Honda years had not masked fundamental problems at McLaren, elaborating that the car reacts well to changes – but is simply lacking speed.

"The car is still very balanced, if you listen to the drivers, they are happy with the balance of the car," Boullier said.

"Whatever you try on set-up the car reacts accordingly. I think the car has no nastiness, if you want, in terms of design.

"We just need to make the car faster around the corners and in a straight line."

Boullier admitted that having the same engine as two other teams provides a benchmark for McLaren, leaving them nowhere to hide.

"We have the same engine as Renault and Red Bull and we are behind, so there is no hiding, nothing else than fact.

"We need to understand why we are slow in qualifying, why we are better in the race, and why we are behind the other Renault teams. Full stop.

"There were obviously some questions asked in Bahrain, there is still an ongoing process because we have to address it, and we will address it, and we are about to address it."

The British team have targeted Barcelona for a major upgrade package, but Boullier admits it will be challenging until then.

"It's difficult, and we are definitely not happy where we are today. We have a lot coming in the pipeline, so hopefully it's going to help us catch up a little bit on the gap we have.

"It's definitely not what everybody was expecting, but it's not easy to step up and to obviously catch up the top three."