McLaren had another disaster weekend in the 2018 Formula 1 French Grand Prix both on and off the track with both Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne unable to score any points.
The weekend started with McLaren having to deny of rift inside the team following former team principal Martin Whitmarsh’s claims, which got heated up in the press conference when Eric Boullier almost had an argument with the media.
The on-track performance hit a new low when both Alonso and Vandoorne were knocked out in Q1 itself. The race didn’t go as per their expectations as well. Alonso was on the backfoot already and he then had a spin while battling Sebastian Vettel.
In the end, he only had the two Williams drivers, Sauber’s Marcus Ericsson, Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley and Vandoorne to fight against, with no chance of scoring a point. This prompted the team to push for a consolation prize.
They pitted Alonso on Lap 46 to switch on to new ultrasoft tyres to try and attempt the race’s fastest lap which was with Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas at that time. However, with the VSC following Lance Stroll’s retirement, they missed the bus.
The Spaniard then suffered a left rear suspension failure and was forced to retire two laps to the end. “I think the race has been quite difficult for us,” he said. “[We were] always in the backfoot [whole weekend].
“At the start, we had to avoid a lot of accidents in front of us where people tend to shortcut the circuit with no issues and since we were on the circuit, the result was to be last in the race [then after].
“At the end, we had no more tyres, no more brakes. We were in traffic in all the race through and then we [decided to] attempt the fastest lap with the ultrasoft tyres, but we had a Virtual Safety Car and we couldn’t manage [it].”
Following his triumphant Le Mans 24 Hours race, the Spaniard was back to reality in F1 where he endured a disastrous weekend as rivals Renault further extended its reign in the battle for fourth position.
Alonso hopes it to be a one-off slump though as teammate Vandoorne in 12th said the car had no issues whatsoever and it was just ‘lack of pace’ all around in the weekend where they struggled to match up with their rivals.
“Nothing really went wrong [with the car],” he said. “We had a decent race after what happened in the opening lap. After that it was kinda following a train, I had few overtakes on Ericsson and I overtook Fernando at the end as well.
“So, on the personal side, I think a positive one but no points for the team, so that’s unfortunate. I think we have just lacked pace in general, so it is nothing particular to say. Yesterday I thought the balance was reasonable like it was today.”
The sit retained fifth place on 40 points with Force India also not scoring on 28, but Renault moved to 62 while Haas also closed in to 27 to make it much more interesting as the season heads to the summer break.
[Read Also: Alonso on Red Bull’s Honda switch]
