Alonso: McLaren still in ‘winter testing’

Fernando Alonso likens McLaren-Honda’s situation to being in “winter testing”, after he and team-mate Jenson Button had to retire with the same technical problem during last Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix.

Coming off two tough outings at power-sensitive Spa and Monza, the British team and its Japanese engine partner entered the Marina Bay weekend with higher hopes only to register their fourth double DNF this year.

But Alonso insists these are only teething troubles and the logical consequences of McLaren-Honda’s slow start to its 2015 campaign.

“The gearbox overheated, which caused some kind of failure,” said the Spaniard. “We had the same problem on both cars.

“In terms of reliability, we’re not on top of the issues we have with the car, but this is normal. The project is too young.

“We now have the same mileage as Mercedes in Australia, so we’re in our winter testing. These issues should not happen in race 13, but we’re a little bit behind the pack.”

Prior to suffering his seventh retirement of the season, Alonso has been fighting on the cusp of the points-paying positions. The double world champion thinks he could have scored for a third time this year, had he not been sidelined with another technical gremlin.

“That’s definitely not a very good result for us because we could be in the points and we missed this opportunity.

“We were running ninth or tenth. The performance on the supersoft was quite good on our car, so that could have been our final position. But first you need to finish the race and we did not.”

REPORT: Vettel takes third win as Hamilton retires in Singapore

AS IT HAPPENED: 2015 Singapore Grand Prix

Click here for some of the most memorable crashes at Singapore

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter