Lando Norris says McLaren have "a hell of a lot to improve" after "pretty shocking" pace in the British Grand Prix despite finishing a solid fourth.
A year on from a one-two result at their home race, the defending world champions were generally the fourth-fastest car behind Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull across the Silverstone Sprint weekend.
Nonetheless, Norris drove strongly to finish third in the Saturday Sprint and then fourth, aided by Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen's late problems, in the main Grand Prix on Sunday.
Still, the world champion was not letting those results cloud the wider picture.
"The results have been pretty amazing - I've been happy with the P3 [in the Sprint] and the P4 [in the Grand Prix]," said Norris to Your Site F1.
"On the contrary, the pace was pretty shocking.
"Really not happy with the car and how it was. Makes me even happier the fact that we finished P4 but we just stayed out of trouble, we avoided mistakes, reliability was good.
"So the things that were important were good but the car was just so difficult.
"We have a hell of a lot to improve."
McLaren have slipped 154 points behind leaders Mercedes in the Constructors' Championship standings, while Norris' chances of defending his world title look remote at 82 points behind Antonelli despite the championship leader's two recent failures to score.
Oscar Piastri is 15 points further back after he finished Sunday's race in 11th having had to pit for repairs at the end of the opening lap after contact with Racing Bulls' Liam Lawson.
Team principal Andrea Stella said the Grand Prix underlined the pace gap McLaren have to make up.
"Overall, the race confirmed that our performance was in line with qualifying," said Stella.
"So we still exhibit a decent gap to Ferrari and Mercedes, probably around half a second. I think the pace with Red Bull was closer, I would say.
"Lando was spending a lot of time behind Hadjar, which was a bit of a shame. Otherwise, I think he could have been closer to the leaders. But, definitely, there's work to do and I think this is in the measure of half a second."
After a difficult start to the season with their all-new MCL40 car - in addition to reliability issues with Mercedes' power unit - McLaren appeared to be getting back in the mix at the front particularly in Japan and Miami, when Piastri and Norris challenged for the wins respectively, but have only one podium finish in the five races since.
Stella said there were several factors as to why McLaren trailed their chief rivals so much at Silverstone.
"I think the fact that we are out of sync with upgrades is probably the biggest single factor," he said. "We see that everyone bringing upgrades improves their lap time potential by three tenths or something.
"And definitely this would not fill the gap that we have to Ferrari and Mercedes because I think it's more in the area of half a second but definitely it would be very helpful.
"The second factor, I would say that here the grip is very low. The conditions are difficult. The car slides. It's quite unpredictable with the wind and there's a premium on cars that have more grip and more downforce because the car is just a little bit easier to predict.
"We talked about the power unit already. There's possibly some opportunities, let me say, by exploiting more out of the power unit that we have available."
Formula 1's summer run continues with the Belgian Grand Prix at legendary Spa-Francorchamps on July 17-19, live on Your Site F1.
