With all these launches, press releases and interviews with drivers, it’s easy to get caught up in the world of “we’re going to be brilliant this year.”

Everyone is so supremely confident, positive and upbeat about the upcoming season; you’d think we’d gate crashed on a private pat-on-the-back party. Here are three statements you are probably sick of:

• We want to challenge for the wins
• Both our drivers are the bee’s knees
• We're happy with the progress we’ve made over the winter

If they sound familiar, it’s because they’ve been trotted out at practically every press conference since the start of the year, and I for one am starting to get bored.

The solution is to keep your eyes peeled for the honest people, the ones that aren’t afraid to tell it like it really is. The best and most recent example is Fernando Alonso.

But to be one second or eight tenths, like we are at the moment, is a little bit too much.

It would be really easy for Alonso – Mr. I-Bring-Six-Tenths – to say it was all going to be fine and they will be completely up to speed by the time Australia rolls around. But he didn’t. He said:

We need to work longer than the others, but that is not possible because there is one month to the first race and we cannot work longer than the others. So we need to work better. We will see what we can do.

It’s refreshing to hear someone admit that it’s not completely perfect, but they’re working on it.

At BMW, they openly admitted the troubles they were having with the new car in testing, they were quite honest about the work they were putting into getting it back up to the level they want, and how that is going. Another team telling it like it is.

We mentioned in the show last week, that Barrichello was all: “All I can say about the car is that it’s better than last year and that’s not saying much.”

You can’t imagine anyone in McLaren being allowed to say that. I love it.