Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso not frustrated by retirements during ‘test year’

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Fernando Alonso says he will not be frustrated by his numerous retirements this season as he describes 2015 as “a test year” for McLaren.

Having missed the Australian Grand Prix, Alonso has retired from races in Malaysia, Barcelona and now Monaco. With a suspected gearbox issue to blame for his third retirement in five races on Sunday, Alonso says there is no frustration with the situation because he doesn’t see the failures as being too costly.

Asked if he’s frustrated not to finish so many races, Alonso replied: “No, I want to be world champion.

“This year it’s not possible, so the more problems that happen this year the better. We will make sure this does not happen next year when we have a competitive car, so this is a test year. iIt’s not a winter test it’s a whole year test and all of my mind, all my focus is on 2016, so we will try to go through 2015 with maximum learning.”

However, Alonso does admit he wants to see McLaren making quicker progress with its reliability issues than it has been so far.

“Both cars we were eighth and ninth so the first points of the season for us, unfortunately we missed the opportunity. Since Barcelona I didn’t finish a single session in the car, I was always talking to [the media] when cars were still running so hopefully we can improve that next time.”

Click here for a gallery of Max Verstappen's crash with Romain Grosjean during the Monaco Grand Prix

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.