McLaren boss Zak Brown has admitted that it will take years before the team returns to winning ways.

McLaren split with racing director Eric Boullier this week and announced a new race-team structure.

“This is going to take some time to fix, so I think we are years away. I don’t know whether that is two or 10 or somewhere in between,” he said.

“We have to be very realistic and honest with ourselves.”

McLaren began the year with lofty ambitions of podium-hunting. Especially after switching from Honda engines to Renault, which Red Bull also use.

But then reality slapped them in the face as their car was nearly two seconds off the pace. Lead driver Fernando Alonso has only managed to get into the top 10 in qualifying twice in nine races so far.

According to Brown, the team have made a backwards step with this year’s car compared to last year’s in terms of aerodynamics.

“We don’t have the same level of downforce this year as last year,” he said.

“We have identified an area in which our car this year is weaker than last year. Did we have the best chassis last year? No, definitely not. Did we have a better chassis? It would be hard to say definitively yes or no but we know we have less downforce than last year.”

Chief technical officer Tim Goss was removed from his post at the end of April. This leaves aerodynamics head Peter Prodromou and engineering director Matt Morris as the remaining member of the technical department.

“We are in the starting process of our recovery plan, and we plan to enhance our technical team,” Brown said.

“We had a good finish in the last race relative to where we started but we were uncompetitive,” he said, “and not much has changed since last race so I think everyone needs to not starting having too-high expectations, ourselves included.”

Alonso has been kept in the loop on the changes and Brown hopes that he will stay with the team next year.

“He really likes the McLaren environment,” Brown said. “He obviously believes in us because he had the ability to leave this year and he chose to stay because he believes in McLaren and I believe he wants to be here long term.”