Alonso rues missed opportunity for McLaren

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Fernando Alonso was left frustrated by more reliability problems which forced his retirement from the Spanish Grand Prix.

With Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg colliding on the opening lap and retiring from the race, McLaren had an opportunity to score solid points but Alonso was forced to retire on lap 47 as he reported a loss of power. Having been chasing down team-mate Jenson Button at the time - who finished ninth - Alonso sees it as a missed opportunity for the team.

"Unfortunately we didn’t capitalise, we had a strong weekend until the race," Alonso said. "Also with the two Mercedes out normally it’s a good chance to score some points but we missed it. We lost everything on the start, we didn’t manage to have a good getaway then I had traffic in front of me all race long and I didn’t show my pace, so that’s the way it is.

"Yeah it was a loss of power, we need to keep investigating what was the cause of it, unfortunately we didn’t capitalise. Normally with Mercedes out of the race it’s a good opportunity to score points, but we didn’t, hopefully we can do it next time."

And Alonso explained he did have some warning there was a problem in the laps leading up to his retirement.

"[Felt it] just in the moment when it happened. It’s true that a couple of laps before we stopped there was some sensors failing and I had some messages from the team and pitwall, we were managing the problem somehow but at the end it was not possible anymore."

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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.