Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsMcLaren

Alonso annoyed to 'look like an amateur driver'

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Fernando Alonso says the lack of competitiveness from McLaren makes him "look like an amateur driver" at the moment.

McLaren struggled throughout the Canadian Grand Prix weekend, with Jenson Button failing to take part in qualifying and both cars retiring from the race. At one stage Alonso was told to save fuel or face "big problems" later in the race, to which he replied: "Already I have big problems now! Driving with this, looking like amateur. So I race and then I concentrate on the fuel."

Asked about his comments after the race, Alonso explained the inability to fight with other cars is what annoys him the most.

"When you are fighting and you get to a group of cars or some people catch you and they are 35km/h quicker on the straight, it’s like a different category," Alonso said. "When everyone passes you so easy like that you look like an amateur driver and obviously that is not good.

"We know that we are not super competitive right now and we need to improve reliability. Many things to do in our case, but hopefully all these weekends teach us some lessons on what to improve. It was not easy here in Canada but I’m sure we will come back stronger."

Despite his annoyance, Alonso says he still has full faith in McLaren and Honda to be successful in the future.

"A little bit sad to have my third consecutive retirement, so definitely we need to put some things in place. There’s nothing we can do now and we know the situation is what it is and what we have to do now is work harder than ever because we want to change the situation.

"What I see for future races makes sense, I see positive signs that everything that is coming makes sense. I think we need to persistent and we need to work harder."

Click here for the latest photos from the Canadian 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.