McLaren's Fernando Alonso has highlighted the weekend of the United States Grand Prix as one of his best of 2017, despite failing to finish the race though an engine issue.
Alonso put in a strong performance all weekend despite his McLaren-Honda being down on power on the Circuit of the Americas track which has a high reliance on straight line speed with its one kilometer long straight in sector two.
In qualifying, Alonso put his MCL32 into Q3 and qualified ninth, only to start in eighth place following a grid penalty for Max Verstappen. For much of the race, the Spaniard showed legitimate pace inside the top ten and looked set for a points finish before an engine failure once again let him down.
"I’m very happy with how the weekend went on a personal level," said Alonso, reflecting on his time in Texas.
"I think the level this weekend was sublime, both in qualifying and in the race. The championship standings don’t reflect that. It doesn’t change much for me to be 12th or 17th in the championship but on merit I think we should be a lot higher up."
Reflecting on his engine failure, a frustrated Alonso said: "The engine was losing power and failing and I couldn’t believe it. In Japan you start last, you are running 15th or 16th after the penalty and nothing happens, the engine works perfectly all race. Now you are running seventh and it starts to fail and you can’t believe it.”
Formula 1 has no break following the US Grand Prix and heads to Mexico next weekend to race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez circuit, and Alonso is predicting that McLaren will have to perform an engine change for the 18th round of the 2017 season.
"I think the engine is broken and in Mexico there was a chance that we could try to change the engine there and be penalised in order to arrive in Brazil and Abu Dhabi with a fresher engine," he said.
"Now it’s basically certain we’ll change the engine in Mexico and therefore another weekend where you start last and it will be complicated to score again.
"Obviously all attention is placed on next year and in these three races I’d like to score points to improve in the standings and to help the team as well. But from the three races remaining in one we’ll start last, so let’s see if we can score in the other two."
In 2017,McLaren has had one of its worst seasons on record,having taken only 23 points from 17 rounds of competition. This has left the Woking-based team in ninth place in the Constructors' Championship, 20 points behind Haas who currently lie in eighth position.
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