Fernando Alonso's suggestion that he has been disproportionately affected by Alpine's reliability struggles this season was met by a stern response from his team-mate Esteban Ocon.
The Spaniard punched the air in frustration after suffering an engine problem at the Mexican Grand Prix. He was angry to miss out on what looked a certain points finish – his third enforced retirement in five races.
Comparing his experience this year to 2015, when he suffered from regular engine reliability issues in his Honda-powered McLaren, Alonso said after his Mexico DNF: "With Honda, both cars stopped. This year, only car 14 stops.
"I think we're not prepared, the engine can't finish the races. It cannot be bad luck when you have to change six or seven engines as we did and we're still not finishing in the races. So I think they have some job to do next winter, hopefully not too much, and let's see."
Alonso also estimated that he has lost 66 points this year to rivals through reliability problems and doubled down on his claim that it is "always the 14 car" that is affected. But his team-mate Ocon disagrees, pointing to some of his own issues including a gearbox problem at Silverstone and an engine failure in Singapore.
"Well, I wrecked my gearbox in Imola [during qualifying], the car in Silverstone. I also failed in Singapore," he told Motorsport-Total. "I'm counting on my side there too. We've both had problems."
Alpine chief Otmar Szafnauer addressed Alonso's claim that he has been disproportionately affected this year by simply stating: "Something like that can happen." He added: "When I was at Honda, Takuma Sato used to have 13 engine failures or something like that in just one year. With Jenson [Button] it was zero.
"The same question was asked there, but we couldn't find an answer. We always asked ourselves, does Takuma drive that much differently than Jenson? I think it was just bad luck.
"You always feel frustrated when you have to retire the car in the race. There was no risk and we already had the points in the bag [in Mexico] – we weren't under pressure. That makes it all the more annoying."
