McLaren 'dejected and dissatisfied' - Boullier

McLaren racing director Eric Boullier says his team was left "dejected and dissatisfied" by its failure to finish the Italian Grand Prix after more reliability issues.

Stoffel Vandoorne was poised to start from the top 10 after impressively reaching Q3 on Saturday but an MGU-K concern led to a power unit change that demoted the Belgian to 18th place. Vandoorne started one place ahead of Fernando Alonso as his teammate took a 35-place grid penalty for a new power unit ahead of the weekend, but the Belgian was fighting just outside the points when a loss of power – which appeared to be a repeat of the MGU-K problem – ended his race.

With Alonso also retiring due to a gearbox issue, Boullier said the result marked an "utterly frustrating" weekend for McLaren.

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"Once again, we were left dejected and dissatisfied," Boullier said. "Both drivers made excellent starts and held their own in the pack for as long as they possibly could, on a track where we knew we'd be facing a tough challenge. By the end of lap six, Stoffel and Fernando were sitting in 13th and 14th positions respectively, and began progressively pushing forward as other cars began to pit.

"Only a few laps into the race, Fernando began to struggle with gearbox issues, which we suspect derived from sensor problems. Although his engineers worked hard throughout the race to instruct Fernando with software management tools to try to rectify the issue, it became more and more difficult to monitor the gearbox remotely due to the sensor failures, so we had no choice but to retire the car as a precaution. Fernando had been on the back foot for most of the race, and had found it tough to maintain pace and momentum in a car that was tough to manage. Under the circumstances, he drove an excellent, very spirited race fraught with challenges, and it's a shame we couldn't get him to the flag.

"For Stoffel, his day ended with heartbreak. His performance all weekend was stellar, and he was running in the top 10 for the duration of his race – at one point as high as seventh from 18th on the grid. It's both frustrating and a huge shame that once again engine reliability issues have meant that he was not only forced to waste the opportunity to start the race in eighth place on the grid, but that all the hard work he would ultimately put in to make progress through the pack and aim for points would be rendered pointless. Like [Saturday] in Q3, he lost power with what we suspect is the same issue as in qualifying, and he had to retire the car.

"For the whole team – who have all worked so hard to give us a fighting chance on this most challenging of tracks – it's an utterly frustrating and disappointing way to end our Italian Grand Prix weekend and the European season."