Subscribe

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe

McLaren's Alonso to use 12th Honda engine of F1 season in Brazil

Honda has been forced to hand Fernando Alonso his 12th engine of a miserable Formula 1 season ahead of Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix

Alonso's wretched run continued in qualifying at Interlagos as he was ordered to stop the car on his first flying lap as McLaren engineers had spotted an abnormal temperature warning.


Alonso pulled off the track, and for a few minutes at least raised a smile as television cameras picked him up sat in a deckchair sunning himself, with his stricken car in the background.

Unable to identify the root cause of the problem, however, the team has had to change the entire power unit, meaning Alonso will be on his third of the weekend.

Alonso initially used a system that ran during the United States Grand Prix, only for that to blow during second practice on Friday.

McLaren then switched to the power unit used in Mexico, but with that failing in qualifying and with no stash remaining, a brand new engine has now been fitted.

In doing so, Alonso will take a 25-place grid penalty, although as he was due to start at the back anyway given his failure to set a qualifying time, it is again an irrelevance.

Overall, Alonso receives a 10-place hit for taking his 12th internal combustion engine, plus five places apiece for using an 11th turbocharger and MGU-H and eighth MGU-K.

Suggested to racing director Eric Boullier the number of incidents were now past the point of embarrassment, he replied: "We don't want these kind of results.

"We want to have more reliability. We try to get more performance, and we have achieved that, but it is true this unreliability is hurting a lot our performance. We have to fix it."

Be part of the Autosport community

Join the conversation
Previous article F1 to honour Paris attack victims before Brazilian Grand Prix
Next article FIA's F1 engine plan 'does my head in' says Mercedes' Toto Wolff

Top Comments

There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?

Sign up for free

  • Get quick access to your favorite articles

  • Manage alerts on breaking news and favorite drivers

  • Make your voice heard with article commenting.

Autosport Plus

Discover premium content
Subscribe