Fernando Alonso reflected on "a very strange season" so far in the wake of his latest car issue at the Austrian Grand Prix.
The Spaniard was at the centre of a bizarre moment just before the start of Saturday's Sprint race, as all the mechanics rushed to the side of the track before the formation lap. It soon became clear Alonso was going nowhere, with his car still up in the air and tyre warmers wrapped around his wheels.
The engineers had been so preoccupied by trying to jump-start his ailing Alpine that they didn't have time to take those other, usually routine steps to get the car ready to move. To make matters worse, he didn't even start the race as the electrical fault proved terminal.
"Five minutes before the start, we have a blackout in the car and we could not switch on the car, we tried to fire it up with an external battery but it didn't work either," explained the 40-year-old. "Something bigger going on there, let's try to fix it for [the Grand Prix]."
It is certainly not the first time this season that Alonso has had decent points-scoring chances taken away from him by reliability issues. It's not even the first time he has had trouble this weekend – his car suffered floor damage during qualifying.
And before arriving in Austria, there were DNFs in Saudi Arabia and at Imola. Meanwhile, he looked set to qualify on the front row in Melbourne before a hydraulics failure while on a wicked lap, and when he did start second in Canada his race was ruined by power loss.
The Alpine cars have been impressively quick over one lap all season, leading to suggestions they may have traded some reliability for power. Alonso dismissed that theory as, with perhaps a slight bit of annoyance, he said: "Esteban's car is always good."
The two-time world champion believes he is driving better than ever, but has lost dozens of points as a result of the problems that have plagued his machine. "I feel probably at my highest level driving-wise, thanks to the experience as well," said F1's oldest current racer.
"[I'm driving at the] level of 2012 and I have 20 points or something like that [28]. It's unbelievable, maybe we lost 70 points or 60, if we count all the retirements and bad luck, and reliability. A very strange season.
"I'm very proud of my own job so far this year, I'm driving at my best and I'm trying to work with the team as close as I can. If we don't get the points, because of all these reasons, it's very frustrating. But I would be more sad if it was because of own mistakes or spinning around or crashing or something like that, I try to do as much as I can.
"For people who don't look at the races or the weekend in general and just look at the standings, they get the wrong impressions for sure with this 2022 [season], because I feel it has been outstanding for number 14 crew, but very unlucky."
