Fernando Alonso had a difficult day in the McLaren Honda after he pulled over to one side on Lap 45 of the race. Despite running in the Top 10 for a large part of the race, the home hero’s race came to an abrupt end, just over the mid-way point.
“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.”
When his McLaren stopped, Alonso was running in 12th position, on his charge for a Top 10 finishing position.
“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.”
Commenting on the retirement, was also Eric Boullier: “Disappointingly for the local fans, Fernando was unable to score points today, owing to a software command issue that stopped the ICE. Until that moment he’d been driving hard and well, and, but for the problem that ended his race, may well have also finished inside the top 10.”
“It was a bittersweet end to an eventful Spanish Grand Prix,” said Yusuke Hasegawa, Head of F1 Project and Executive Chief Engineer at Honda. “Fernando’s retirement was caused by a software command issue that stopped the ICE. We think that the power unit as a whole is not damaged from this incident, but we will continue to investigate the effects of this stop. Obviously we will work with the team to see how this kind of situation can be avoided in the races going forward.”
