McLaren chief Zak Brown says he was in a “state of disbelief” over Fernando Alonso’s stoppage during the opening stages of the first practice session in Spain.
Alonso emerged from the garage for his out lap on Friday morning but a power unit failure, caused by an oil leak, pitched him into a half-spin entering Turn 3, bringing his session to an early halt.
The failure was the latest in a long list of problems for McLaren-Honda so far in 2017; Alonso was able to return to action in FP2, but set the slowest time in the session amid more power complaints.
“Sadness… disappointment… just kind of a state of disbelief,” Brown said on his feelings of Alonso’s stoppage.
“But you then can’t cry over spilt milk, so [it was about] quickly getting to turning your attention to Stoffel [Vandoorne’s] car and seeing what we learn there.
“He’s gone alright today all things considered, he’s done an exceptional job, then you hope to learn by whatever caused the failure.”
Alonso left the circuit in order to play tennis, before returning for the second session, and Brown defended his driver’s actions.
“I think anything Fernando can do to exercise his frustration is a good thing,” he commented.
“If you go sit in a room you just don’t exercise, [you need to] get some energy out, you get built up energy, you expect to go out and do an hour and a half and end up doing something substantially less than that.
“I think going and doing other activities to get your mind off it is healthy.”
On whether Honda’s reliability situation was deteriorating, Brown countered: “I don’t know that reliability is getting worse as we haven’t had much reliability yet.”
Alonso's failure means he has edged closer to a grid penalty after taking on new power unit elements.
