Fernando Alonso kicking himself for Hungarian GP qualifying spin

He still qualified seventh but felt he could have done much better, and also triggered an immediate yellow flag situation that affected the pole battle.

"I made mistakes in a couple of corners already in that lap so I was not happy with the start of the lap and I overdrove probably a little too much," he said.

"There was a little bit of frustration as well in the last couple of corners so I made a mistake, I spun.

"It was possible to improve a lot on the lap time that we set before.

"The only thing is that everybody improved their lap times so I don't know if the final position could be better, the same or worse because everyone will improve anyway - not only us.

"I'm a little sad and disappointed with myself because of this.

"But at the end of the day I've been seventh every single session this weekend: FP1, FP2, FP3 and qualifying.

"So hopefully on Sunday we can improve on that position and score some points."

Jenson Button was one place behind in eighth, making this the best qualifying result for the team since McLaren-Honda reformed its partnership.

"Our pace has been reasonably good all weekend but I think still when we get to qualifying we take a step back or other people turn their engines up more and have more performance in qualifying," said Button.

"The conditions helped us; the team did a good job.

"There was still more left on the table, we could have been higher up - definitely ahead of [Carlos] Sainz [Jr] - but we had a flag at the end that stopped us from being further up the grid.

"On Sunday, the top five cars are going to disappear wet or dry so the fight is really from sixth back.

"If it's wet it always makes it exciting and you always have to think on your feet which I think we're good at doing as a team.

"But in the dry our pace is good, in the long runs as well, so it's going to be a good fight where we are on the grid."