An irate Fernando Alonso has expressed his amazement at McLaren-Honda’s straight-line speed deficit after another miserable race for the Woking outfit in Bahrain.
Alonso lined up 15th on the grid in Sakhir after the latest in a string of failures cut his qualifying session short.
The Spaniard fought valiantly in a desperate struggle to snatch a point, and was running 12th when yet more unreliability consigned him to a third consecutive retirement in the dying stages.
Alonso stressed that drivers were coming from as much as 400 metres behind to pass him into Turn 1 – his latest scathing indictment of engine suppliers Honda.
“It was amazing the deficit that we had on the straights today,” he told the press.
“Sometimes I looked in the mirror at the beginning of the straight, I saw the car 300, 400 metres behind, so I forgot completely about that car and started changing settings on the steering wheel, and under braking he was alongside!
“So it was surprising at times the deficit we had. We tried to be close to the points. We nearly did it because we were running P11, P12, but not enough so we need to keep working.”
The 35-year old went as far to suggest that team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne was possibly fortunate to be sidelined by a pre-race failure.
“Obviously, green light is on, you start being motivated and start fighting,” he added. “Sometimes, well, I was thinking of Stoffel at the start of the race and I don’t know if it was good or bad luck for him.
“When you are in the race, you are so vulnerable, you are so behind on the straights there is no way you can defend.”
On a weekend where he reaffirmed his desire to challenge for the title in 2018, Alonso appears to have finally run out of patience.
