Fernando Alonso has accepted that his crash in qualifying for the Monaco Grand Prix was his fault, and has therefore offered an apology to his Alpine team.
Alonso was gunning to try and displace Lando Norris for P5 and best of the rest having initially set a lap good enough for seventh.
However, he overcooked it going into Mirabeau, and slammed into the barrier, causing some damage to the front end.
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In the end, it would have mattered little even had he kept it out of the barrier, because at roughly the same time, Sergio Perez also found the wall at Portier and collected Carlos Sainz, extracting the red flag.
The Spaniard revealed after qualifying that he had not been able to get his tyres up to temperature before his final lap, and tried to overcompensate by pushing too hard on his run.
“I made a mistake, The out-lap was not ideal,” explained Alonso.
“The brakes were cold in Turn 1, so in Turn 3 and Turn 4 I was thinking ‘keep pushing on’ because I didn’t do the preparation right.
“Then I was looking at the screen and I braked too late for Turn 5, so it was a very stupid mistake.
“Even though we made a big improvement with the car for today, and position-wise it’s been a good qualifying, we could have been even better.
“In Monaco, when you lose concentration, even for a second, it can have a big impact. So I apologise to the team.”
However, there may yet be a chance for Alonso to get onto the podium if rain materialises during the race, so he predicts an eventful afternoon.
“It’s going to rain, apparently, I think the situation will change a lot, so let’s see,” he added.
“Nobody knows how we will perform in the rain here or how they agree it will be, so a lot of question marks and a very stressful afternoon for everyone.
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“We need to see if the rain comes as it could be very chaotic with lots of Safety Cars and red flags. If it does rain, I’m sure it will be great to watch on TV, but very stressful inside the car!”
Alonso’s P7 means that he has out-qualified team-mate Esteban Ocon for the third time this year with the Frenchman starting Sunday’s race in tenth.