Fernando Alonso described his failure to start the Russian Grand Prix as ‘sad’ as McLaren suffered their second such feat in a row.
The McLaren driver reported to the team he had problems with the charge of his car on the formation lap. He didn’t even make it back as far as the garage, parking the car at the entrance to the pitlane and necessitating the rest of the field took another formation lap while his car was recovered.
It was later revealed by the team as energy recovery system failure which caused Alonso to stop, a different failure from two weeks ago in Bahrain. McLaren had multiple MGU-H failures in Bahrain, which saw Stoffel Vandoorne withdraw before the race start.
Alonso said to the BBC, “It’s obviously frustrating. Four races into the championship, four DNFs. This time we did not even make the start. That’s sad, but there is nothing we can do.
“I come here, drive as fast as I can to try and help the team. We just hope the next race will be better. I’m just a driver. I help the team but the team has to look at the bigger picture.”
McLaren is still yet to score a point this season, although teammate Stoffel Vandoorne finished the race in 14th place after starting at the back of the grid. He was only ahead of the two Sauber drivers, a team which will be supplied by Honda next season.
