NEWCASTLE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 26: Steven Ugarkovic of the Jets in action during the round 25 A-League match between the Newcastle Jets and the Perth Glory at Hunter Stadium on March 26, 2016 in Newcastle, Australia. (Photo by Ashley Feder/Getty Images)

This weekend's Russian Grand Prix is a 5.848km/3.634-mile street track passes alongside the Olympic Village, making it the third circuit on this year's calendar to incorporate a former Olympic venue, along with the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve (Montreal '76) and the Circuit de Catalunya (Barcelona '92).

As this will only be the fourth time the pinnacle of Motorsports will race here, the best result McLaren has at this venue is 2014, when Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen finished fourth and fifth. The team had performed well all weekend, with Button lining up fourth on the grid and Magnussen sixth.

While the Honda powered squad haven't been performing to this level in recent seasons, after a recent successful test, Fernando Alonso is confident that both cars will at least finish the race, and if luck is on their side, there may be a few points headed their way as well.

“Sochi Autodrom is an interesting circuit – a mixture of challenges, and ones which I think will be tackled quite differently this year with the new regulations for 2017. For example, Turn Three last year used to be tricky and you needed to be very precise – it's a multi-apex left-hander which means good car balance and control are important to not get out of shape mid-corner. This year, though, it will likely be taken flat, so I'm looking forward to seeing how the feeling in the car has changed around this circuit,” he explained.

“There are two long, slightly-curved straights and high-speed corners, which means this circuit will be challenging for us with the package we have, but our car is also very well-balanced, so I hope we can get the most out of the many 90-degree corners that make this circuit so unique. Although it's technically a city circuit, it's pretty fast overall and the track itself is wide, so it usually provides close racing and good overtaking opportunities."

"A positive result for us in Sochi will be to finish the race with both cars, first of all, as we've suffered a few reliability issues over the past couple of weekends. I followed the test in Bahrain and I'm pleased that we were able to secure a lot of valuable data from both the car and the power unit, and I know everyone at McLaren-Honda is working hard to put that to good use to aid our progress as quickly as possible."

"The season is long, but there isn't much time between races – especially fly-aways – for development, so the laps we managed on the final day of the test were a big positive for us and hopefully will be beneficial to us over the next few races.”