However, his hopes of holding onto the position vanished when his Aston Martin began to smoke and he parked up at Rascasse, which was the culmination of an earlier problem that initially appeared to be manageable.
“I think the race was difficult from our side,” Alonso concluded. “We had to manage many things – from Lap 15 we had a problem so we didn’t have the electrical part of the engine. It was 160hp [horsepower] less.
“Here in Monaco it’s not crucial, the power, so we kept sixth position alive for quite a long time, but in the end the engine stopped. It was not the end of the weekend that we wanted.
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“It is not down to luck. It’s not that the wrong Safety Car or something came from the sky and hit our car – today [there] was something wrong on our engine that we need to investigate and try to improve for next time.
“I’m competitive – it’s not that I feel slow or I just have contact with the wall or with people on the first lap and because of my mistakes, I’m not scoring any points. I think I’m driving at a high level and I just need to wait and see what happens in the next races.”
