McLaren MP4-31

The McLaren MP4-31 is a Formula One racing car designed by McLaren to compete in the 2016 Formula One season. The car is being driven by 2005 and 2006 World Drivers' Champion Fernando Alonso and 2009 World ChampionJenson 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. The car uses the Honda RA616H power unit, the second engine developed by Honda since their return to the sport with McLaren in 2015.

Season review
After a generally much better pre-season in terms of reliability than the year before, the team headed to the 2016 Australian Grand Prix with progress made to the Honda power unit. McLaren showed progress with the car by qualifying 12th and 13th. However, the race was a disappointment as Alonso was involved in an accident with Haas's Esteban Gutiérrez which caused Alonso's car to barrel roll a few times before landing upside down. His car was totally wrecked and Alonso suffered from broken ribs, ruling him out of the next race inBahrain . Ironically, Button's race was badly affected because of this, as the red flag was shown after he had made a pit stop. 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.

In Bahrain, the team fielded reserve driver Stoffel Vandoorne to replace the injured Alonso. Both cars once again made it to Q2 easily. During the race, Button was on course for a good result, however unreliability struck him once again, retiring after just eight laps with engine problem. However, Vandoorne did have the honours to pick up McLaren's first point by finishing tenth, including a notable overtake on the Force India of former McLaren driver Sergio Pérez. Alonso then returned for the Chinese Grand Prix. Both the cars once again comfortably made it into Q2, albeit not Q3 but then had an uninspiring race to get two cars to the finish line for the first time outside the points, despite Alonso at one time running third. The Russian race saw both cars failing to make it into Q3, extending that barren run to 23 races. However, in a race of attrition, both cars benefited from turn one incidents to have a clean race, with both cars finishing well inside the points, just the second time since the renewed partnership between McLaren and Honda. Alonso finished in sixth place and Button in ninth. The 2016 Spanish Grand Prix saw McLaren eventually making it into the top ten in qualifying for the first time since the 2014 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with Alonso in tenth. However, it was Button who claimed the points after Alonso retired. 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. Button finished ninth, but felt that he could have finished higher had he not get stuck behind traffic. The team now moved to within three points of last year's tally of just 27 points as a result. In Canada, Alonso once again qualified 10th and Button 12th. 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. Both the cars failed to score points with Button recovering to finish 11th and Alonso retiring due to a gearbox problem. At the Red Bull Ring, Austria, the team was expected to struggle for performance due to the high speed nature of the track. But surprisingly, the car performed above everybody's expectations as Button qualified 5th and started in 3rd, equalling his best qualifying position since 2014 British Grand Prixwhere qualifying was also held in mixed conditions, due to Rosberg and Vettel receiving 5 place grid penalties. Alonso meanwhile struggled with the car and managed to qualify down in 14th, due to the team's error in sending him out in old tyres instead of the newer ones. During the race, Button managed to get into 2nd before the first corner, overtaking the slow starting Force India of Nico Hülkenberg. 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. The team has now scored more points with less than half of the season completed compared to last year's tally of 27 points. At Hungaroring, both cars made it into Q3 for the first time since Abu Dhabi in 2014, their last race with engines supplied by Mercedes, with Alonso qualifying 7th and Button qualifying 8th. In the first few laps of the race, Button experienced a problem with the brake pedal sensor which lead to a drop in pace, a pit stop, and then a penalty for illegal radio communications when discussing the problem. Button eventually retired with an oil leak on lap 60 after making some progress moving from the back of the field. Alonso had a stronger race, heading the front of the midfield. While not troubling the faster Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari cars, Alonso was able to keep the Torro Rosso of Sainz a comfortable distance behind him and finished in 7th. Hockenheimring featured the McLaren cars battling in the midfield for the lower point places. After some good midfield battles, both cars struggled towards the end with fuel saving. This led to Alonso dropping out of the points in the last few laps and finishing 12th. 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.

Complete Formula One results
(key) (results in bold indicate pole position; results in italics indicate fastest lap) * Season still in progress. † Driver failed to finish the race, but was classified as they had completed greater than 90% of the race distance.