Alonso rues safety car interruptions after eye-catching race pace at Imola

F1 Grand Prix, GP Emilia-Romagna, Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari

On the back of a stellar performance in qualifying at Imola, Fernando Alonso had hoped for more in the race, but the safety car interruptions came at exactly the wrong time for the two-time F1 champion, depriving him of any chances of fighting for his first points of the season.

Aston Martin displayed a stellar performance in qualifying on Saturday with their heavily upgraded car, and had hoped for some valuable points on Sunday.

Both drivers appeared to be fairly quick on Pirelli's mediums during their initial stint, and looked on for a good haul of points. However, the virtual safety car heavily compromised their race, especially Alonso's.

When the standard safety car came out onto the Autodromo Internazionale Enzo e Dino Ferrrari, Alonso and Stroll were unable to pit under the last Safety Car after running out of tyres to fit. That dropped both of them back through the field, and failed to score any point on a day when Aston Martin had the pace to finish in the top ten.

The two-time F1 champion was left particularly frustrated as he has remained without any points this year, and the Imola F1 race was definitely his best chance yet to break that streak.

Reflecting on his race, Alonso said: "The car was very strong today and I was having a good race until the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) turned our race upside down. I think without this VSC we could have been fighting for P6 or P7 and scored points on merit.

"At the restart we were out of the points but managed to overtake three cars in nine laps and we just ran out of time. It's a real shame but let's hope for better luck in future races."

His team-mate Lance Stroll finished down in 15th, blaming the virtual safety car for the dismal outcome of the Imola F1 race.

"The start of the race felt okay: I managed to pull away from Gasly and hold onto Albon in front of me. Unfortunately, with the Virtual Safety Car phase and the way the race unfolded, it didn't play out well for us today.

"Without the Virtual Safety Car, we might have been able to finish in the points so bad luck and a disappointing result. We now need to look to Monaco next week and see if we can continue to show signs of positive improvements with the update as it's a very different track."

Reflecting Aston Martin's race at Imola, team boss Andy Cowell conceded that the Silverstone-based outfit might have brought Alonso and Stroll in for a set of new tyres during the VSC.

"We came within a whisker of scoring points, but the racing luck was not on our side today. A promising one-stop strategy was undone by the timing of the Virtual Safety Car (VSC) which dropped both Fernando and Lance outside the points.

"With hindsight, we could have pitted again under the VSC, but we did not want to sacrifice track position. We then struggled to hold off those cars with a tyre advantage.

"Nonetheless, we take away the positives from a weekend where we have seen genuine progress. The updates have added some performance and given us direction for the upcoming events.

"Credit to the drivers, too, who did not put a wheel out of place this weekend. It's onwards to Monaco now which is a very different challenge."