Alonso F1 engine failures are “luck of the draw”

The Spaniard was forced to retire from last weekend’s race on the 64th lap with a cylinder issue while running in seventh place.

The retirement cost Alpine priceless points in its battle with McLaren for fourth in the F1 world championship.

After the race, Alonso reflected on how many engine problems he has had in 2022, and how they always seemed to happen to his car.

“So again, this was an engine issue,” said Szafnauer when asked why there was a pattern. “And we don’t have the same people preparing an Esteban engine or a Fernando engine, they all mix around.

“The probability of this happening isn’t zero. So it can happen. But it is lower to always to have it on one side or the other. But, when I was at Honda, I can’t remember how many engine failures Takuma Sato had, like 13 in a year, and Jenson [Button] had none. Zero.

“And the question always came up, we couldn’t find anything to show that it was one side or the other. And at that point, the questions were always does Takuma drive it so much differently to Jenson, that it always happens on his side?

“I think it was just the luck of the draw. So I think it’s the luck of the draw [this time].”

Pressed on whether or not there was a reason, he said: “Not that we can find. So it’s not that we can see that, ‘It’s this set of circumstances, it’s always on Fernando’s side’.”

Szafnauer admitted that he understood that Alonso might be upset: “Look, we apologise to Fernando. You always feel frustrated when you’re managing a race, forward, backward. I mean, there was no risk whatsoever.

“And you know the points are in the bag, no one’s pushing you. And that makes it even more frustrating. So I get it.”

The race initially went to plan for Alpine, with Alonso and team-mate Esteban Ocon crucially ahead of the McLarens of Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo. Alonso also gained a place from Valtteri Bottas, with Ocon jumping the Finn later on.

“Once we were ahead of them, it was just about managing,” said Szafnauer. “Fernando, for example, was driving at about a second a lap slower than he could have. And just managing temperatures, brakes. We knew it was going to be tough to get it to the end.

“And Esteban, on the other hand, did a really good job to get ahead of the McLarens.

“We initially set out to go on to the hard. But then we did see that the…