Fernando Alonso revealed he was driving without the energy provided by his MGU-K for much of the Monaco Grand Prix.
He lost the extra power after suffering a problem with his Energy Recovery System early in the race. He was able to continue for a while but was forced to stop on lap 36, just shy of half-distance.“I’m disappointed because the race was difficult from our side,” he told the official F1 channel after the race. “We had to manage many things.
“Since lap 15 we had an ERS problem so we didn’t have the electrical part of the engine, so it was 160 horsepower less. Here in Monaco, it’s not crucial, the power, so we kept sixth position alive for quite long.”
Daniel Ricciardo won the Monaco Grand Prix seven years ago despite losing power from the MGU-K in his Red Bull. However Alonso’s car did not last the distance.
“The engine stopped and it was not the end of the weekend that we wanted,” he said.
“But today it is not down to luck, it’s not that a wrong Safety Car or something came from the sky and hit our car. Today was something wrong on our engine that we need to investigate and try to improve for next time.”
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Alonso has suffered a luckless start to the season and remains yet to score a point after the first eight rounds. However he is drawing consolation from the team’s improved pace particularly since their upgrade in the last round at Imola.
“I’m competitive, it’s not that I feel slow or just have contact with the wall or with people in the first lap and because of my mistakes I’m not scoring any point,” he said. “I think I’m driving at a high level and I just need to wait and see what happens in the next races.”
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pcxmac (@pcxmac)
25th May 2025, 17:42
A shame Alonso isn’t going to alpine next year.
Jere (@jerejj)
25th May 2025, 17:49
I’m positive he’ll eventually open up points scoring at the current rate.
BasCB (@bascb)
25th May 2025, 19:13
It does make for a really interesting story – what will keep Alonso from scoring this time round!
Sir Martin
25th May 2025, 19:47
Loss of the MGU-K? That brings about 160 additional horsepower to the power unit – enough to move a saloon car along nicely
Coventry Climax
26th May 2025, 0:52
If it is a 160 hp.
You forget that the K stands for Kinetic, meaning REGAINING energy out of motion obtained by fuel, otherwise just lost by braking, temporarily stored and used to accellerate again out of the corner, and then again for the next corners, lap after lap.
So it will power your saloon car (of some 1500 kg?) quite nicely indeed. For just about 50 meters or so.
Phil Taylor
26th May 2025, 13:22
I think you’re confusing power with energy. 160bhp is simply that – it’s got nothing to do with duration.
Genghis Blond
28th May 2025, 17:36
People are missing the Martin Brundle reference.
J765
25th May 2025, 20:37
Alonso with an excuse. That’s new!
roadrunner (@roadrunner)
25th May 2025, 21:45
Parking a smoking car is a pretty solid one though
Genghis Blond
28th May 2025, 17:38
This guy always has something to say about Alonso.
MacLeod (@macleod)
26th May 2025, 7:58
@roadrunner As roadrunner said the smoke told us a engine failure.
Is it me or did we have now several Mercedes engines failures? And that after 8 rounds…
qwqwqwqwqwqwqwqwqw
MacLeod (@macleod)
26th May 2025, 7:59
ignore the ‘qwqwqwqwqwqwqwqwqw’ not sure where that came from.
Phil Taylor
26th May 2025, 13:23
I thought that was the best bit of your comment ;-)
Alonso (@alonshow)
26th May 2025, 6:47
I’d love to see the radio transcript for those laps. In a track like Monaco I don’t think you can actually say on the radio that you’ve lost the ERS, otherwise you’d be giving too valuable info to your rivals. So I wonder how he managed that with his race engineer.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
26th May 2025, 9:59
Mmm, ricciardo said he was losing power back in 2018 when he had the mgu-k problem halfway into the race and still ended up winning.
Alonso (@alonshow)
26th May 2025, 12:29
Guess it’s not so bad to let others know, then. But if I was in a rival team and I found out Alonso had just lost his ERS, I would immediately look for ways to exploit his weakness.
Dave
26th May 2025, 15:28
He gave a hint when his engineer apparently told him to push and he tersely responded “I cannot push” :)
Alonso (@alonshow)
27th May 2025, 10:28
Maybe that was a way of telling his engineer about the problem without giving too much away to his rivals. Did he say that in the live broadcast, though? I can’t remember it.