Alonso in P14: "We waited for something to happen"

Fernando Alonso couldn't muster a better finish than P14, and the Spaniard explained his result by stating that he was simply waiting for something to happen in front of him that he could pounce on.

The two-time champion already knew beforehand that it wasn't going to be an easy race for McLaren, especially as both him and teammate Stoffel Vandoorne got an engine penalty, setting them back even further. He tried to pit early and cause an upset that way, but it didn't matter in the end. P14 was all he could do.

"We were waiting for something to happen," Alonso told Movistar+ after the race.

"We stopped very early to see if we could force people to also stop early and exhaust their tyres.

"The bad thing was that the softs lasted almost the entire race."

That last fact was evident, as Max Verstappen easily drove the first 40 laps and change on one set of soft tyres of the total 53 laps in Sochi.

Alonso stays realistic, knowing that his tools weren't capable of more than he got in Russia. He mustered a nice P8-finish in Singapore last time out, but it just wasn't meant to be in Russia.

"We deserved P14 if nothing happened in front of us.

"We knew it was going to be hard on pure performance.

"We scored no points but hopefully we can come back next race."