Alonso calls his Chinese Grand Prix F1 race drive 'incredible'

The Spaniard stopped after 33 laps thanks to suffering a driveshaft problem, just after being passed by Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz.

After describing his performance in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix as "probably the best race of my life", Alonso suggested China was even better.

"Yeah, incredible," said Alonso when asked if he was happy with his performance.

"I thought Australia would be unrepeatable and here it was the same or even better. The conditions helped, so we took advantage of that.

"People were spinning left and right and we were gaining places more or less for free, and then when the track was damp we were keeping the pace of the best with a top speed deficit.

"[It's] one of the best things that has happened to me."

Alonso started 13th and climbed to eighth early on in tricky conditions despite his clear top-speed deficit on the long back straight.

The Spaniard is confident he would have finished in the points, potentially finishing as high as eighth, and found it surreal to be able to spend several laps of the race running ahead of the Mercedes of the recovering Bottas.

"I think we'd be fighting with Perez and Magnussen [who finished eighth and ninth] for the final points," he said.

"We could have scored one or two points like in Australia in an incredible way, because running ahead of Bottas [when] he can't overtake you for two or three laps was one of the most surreal things that has ever happened to me.

"He was 300m behind me and he passed me on the straight, but then I could sort of stay with him on the following lap.

Alonso said the team is still paying the price for its lack of running in testing, with team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne also retiring from the Chinese GP with a fuel system problem.

"Having not done testing we are discovering new problems race after race," said Alonso.

"Let's hope we can have a normal reliability soon to be able to finish the races."