Fernando Alonso had been running twelfth behind teammate Jenson Button, and closing the gap to the Brit, when his McLaren-Honda cut out its power and left him stranded at Turn 3.
The Spaniard had to pull the car over to the edge of the track and retire the car from the race, close to the incident of his 2015 pre-season testing mystery crash. It was a shame for the Spaniard who had been hoping that he could have a repeat performance from Russia.
Alonso had been trying to optimise on the opportunity that has arisen from the two Mercedes taking each other out of the race. However, after a start he deemed poor himself Alonso felt he was trying to fight back from the start.
“My car felt okay this afternoon, but I didn’t manage to make a good start and lost everything – so my race was effectively over by the first corner. After that, I followed Jenson for 50 laps and had traffic all race long, so I wasn’t able to do too many laps in free air or show my true pace.
“At the end, I lost power somehow – we don’t know the exact cause. We weren’t able to capitalise on our reasonable level of competitiveness. With both Mercedes out, we had a good opportunity to score some points today, but we didn’t manage it, so we need to keep improving.”
It is two weeks before the Monaco Grand Prix. In this time, Alonso will be hoping for more reliability in the Honda engine so that he can optimise on the growing competitiveness of the McLaren package and score some more points. Monaco is a good chance for the McLaren team as their power deficit will be less of a burden.
