R is a multi-paradigm language with a dynamic type system, different object systems and functional characteristics. These characteristics support the development of statistical algorithms at a high level of abstraction. Although R is commonly used in the statistics domain a big disadvantage are its runtime problems when handling computation-intensive algorithms. Especially in the domain of machine learning the execution of pure R programs is often unacceptably slow. Our long-term goal is to resolve these issues and in this contribution we used the traceR tool to analyse the bottlenecks arising in this domain. Here we measured the runtime and overall memory consumption on a well-defined set of classical machine learning applications and gained detailed insights into the performance issues of these programs.