McLaren racing director Eric Boullier claimed the team “dared to hope” their pointless streak would come to an end in Canada until another engine failure forced Fernando Alonso into retirement two laps from the end.
In what is one of the hardest races of the year on engines in terms of performance and efficiency, the Honda power unit struggled for competitiveness during the race.
Yet despite what Alonso branded as “dangerous” speed differences between his MCL32 and other cars down the straight, the Spaniard was in 10th place until he ground to a halt at Turn 8 with around 10 kilometres to the finish.
“For the first time this season, running in 10th place within spitting distance of the flag, we dared to hope,”Boullier said.
“OK, what we were daring to hope for were hardly rich pickings: a solitary world championship point for Fernando, who had driven superbly all afternoon, as he’s driven superbly every race-day afternoon for the past two-and-a-half years.
“But, after so much toil and heartache, even that single point would have felt like a victory and then came yet another gut-wrenching failure.”
Trying to describe the feeling at watching Alonso retire from his fifth race from six starts this season, Boullier admitted: “It’s difficult to find the right words to express our disappointment, our frustration and, yes, our sadness.
“So I’ll say only this: it’s simply, and absolutely, not good enough.”
Speaking with Sky Sports after the race, executive director Zak Brown added: “It should have been a point, it just let go without any warning, and it feels like you can replay this interview at a lot of races this year – it’s very frustrating.”
The result does little to ease the growing disenchantment between McLaren and Honda, with Brown declaring before the weekend that the team’s patience was “near our limit”.
Rumours are growing more rampant that a divorce is on the cards, with talks between senior McLaren figures and Mercedes spotted again in Canada.
“[We’ll] just [be] talking about what the different options are and the things we can maybe do to fix the situation,” Brown said when asked where the Woking team goes from here.
“This [result] reinforces that we can’t just sit around and wait for things to come good, we need to be proactive in that.”