McLaren-Honda racing director Eric Boullier felt it was a day to forget for the Woking-based team at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve on Sunday after leaving the Canadian circuit without any points.
Boullier saw Fernando Alonso miss out on the points in eleventh after attempting a one-stop strategy, but team-mate Jenson Button was an early retirement with a technical issue that saw flames coming out of the back of the car.
“Bluntly, today was a day to forget,” said Boullier. “Having qualified adequately yesterday, both our drivers started this afternoon’s race well enough, and they both ran pretty solidly in the early stages.
“After just nine laps, however, Jenson was forced to retire his car, owing to a fault whose exact nature we’re still in the process of determining.
“Thereafter, Fernando did as well as he could, but, in the absence of the rain that we’d half-expected might come, he was unable to finish higher than 11th.
“Clearly, the fact that we’re therefore leaving Canada with no world championship points to add to our tally is disappointing.”
With the European Grand Prix in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku just seven days away, Boullier is happy there is so little time between races so they can put the outcome of the race in Canada behind them.
“However, one of the upsides of such setbacks is that, in Formula 1, there’s always another race just around the corner – in this case just a few days away in fact,” said Boullier.
“Already, therefore, we’ve turned our attention to the challenge of a brand-new circuit, in Baku, where we hope to put up a better show than we did here in Montreal today.”
