McLaren once again betrayed by its engine in Bahrain
Fernando Alonso once again had to contend with a technical problem on his MGU-H, which prevented him from doing better than 15th. Stoffel Vandoorne came to a halt in Q1, with the 17th fastest time.
McLaren and Fernando Alonso made headlines at the beginning of the week with the announcement of the Spanish driver’s participation in the upcoming Indianapolis 500. While this helped to slightly polish the team’s image, the harsh reality hit as soon as the Sakhir qualifying took place.
Indeed, if the double world champion once again managed to get into Q2, he had to face new difficulties with his engine from his first lap in Q2 and was forced to return to his car before crossing the line: « Unfortunately, my lap in Q2 was good. I think that up to the last corner, I was half a second better than my time in Q1. When I pressed the accelerator, there was a problem with the power unit. It hurts because we had a good chance to position ourselves a few places ahead. »
The frustration doesn’t stop there since the Spaniard knows he will have to change his engine, which therefore won’t be optimally tuned. He is expecting another complicated race and doesn’t have high hopes about what he will be able to do: « We will have to install a new power unit, which will therefore not have the perfect settings. The first lap this engine will do is the formation lap. It won’t have any warm-up phases. We won’t have any laps to adjust it. So we are going to have an even more difficult race than we expected. »
If it was the first technical issue of the weekend for Fernando Alonso, it wasn’t the case for Stoffel Vandoorne. The rookie was forced to stop during the second practice session on Friday. This cost him valuable track time under the same conditions expected in qualifying. He entered this session with many unknowns, preventing him from fully attacking: « Not running in FP2 cost us a bit. It was difficult for me to have a clear idea of the grip available on the track and how the super softs would behave. But in the end, it was more or less what we expected. »
The Belgian therefore knew that he could hardly hope for better than his 17th time during this session because he is not in a position to improve the available power of his engine: « We know that in qualifying others can boost their engine and have more pace. We just have to do the perfect lap and see where we end up. »
Being able to finish the Grand Prix would already be a first victory for the two drivers from Woking…
