Why Fernando Alonso spent '50 laps’ wrongly thinking he was on course for point in Monaco

Fernando Alonso has admitted he “got confused” and spent “50 laps” of the F1 Monaco Grand Prix mistakenly believing that he was on course for a points finish.

The Aston Martin driver finished Sunday’s race 11th behind Alpine’s Pierre Gasly but had been convinced he was actually running inside the top-10 and battling to secure the final point on offer in 10th.

After teammate Lance Stroll suffered a puncture in front of him and dropped down the order, Alonso believed he was defending from RB’s Daniel Ricciardo in a bid to salvage a point for Aston Martin, when he was in fact 11th.

"I got confused because when we [built the gap] and Lance was in front of me after the pitstops, they said, 'okay, we secured 10th.' We've been doing all this for that last point,” Alonso said.

"Then Lance had the puncture, I said, 'Oh, now I have all the responsibility in my shoulders with very old tyres to bring this point back home.' I was driving for 50 laps thinking that I was 10th.

"And then when I crossed the line and they told me P11, I said, 'Oh, so, uh, all that stress for nothing.' But anyway, it kept me alive.

"I don't know [why that happened]. When the red flag came out, Lance was P10, I was P12. And then at one point they reinstated Sainz in P3, so we were 12th and 14th, we should be 13th and 14th, but Lance was in front of Daniel that he was not supposed to be.

"So I don't know in which position I started, and I don't know in which position I was driving.”

Sunday’s race was described as boring by many drivers, with the top 10 finishing as they started for the first time in F1 history.

Alonso reckoned the early red flag period for a huge first-lap pile-up ultimately ruined the race, because it allowed the field to change their tyres and subsequently removed the mandatory pit stop rule.

"When there is a red flag and then you change tyres and you go to the end, the only point of interest in a Monaco race is the pitstops that you have to do. If you remove that excitement of a pit stop, then it becomes nothing," Alonso said.

"Maybe it reopens the conversations of when there is a red flag, not changing tyres or be obliged to have the same tyre or something, because if not, there are certain occasions that the race is compromised.

"In our case it was very unlucky again. I think we didn't have the pace. It was a bad weekend. No doubt about that. We cannot hide our performance, but also we cannot hide that we've been very unlucky.

"We started with a hard tyre just to go very end and have an alternative strategy. There is a red flag, so we have to fit the medium and do 78 laps with the medium, which is a kamikaze strategy, but it was the only way to try to score some points."