The Spaniard, starting on the back row after being handed 40 positions in grid penalties, took advantage of the chaos in front of him to climb up to fifth position before the halfway point of the race.

From there, however, the Spaniard was unable to keep his rivals behind him and lost places until he dropped down to ninth, where he would end.

With all the leading cars hitting problems at some point, Alonso believes that McLaren should have been in a position to win.

"It was a race that in normal circumstances we should have won," said Alonso, "because I was with [race winner Daniel] Ricciardo when the first safety car came out.

"Hamilton lost his headrest, Vettel was penalised, both the Force Indias were out, Kimi retired...

"So you are automatically in the top two or three, so we should have fought for victory, but unfortunately we are not in that position," he added.

Alonso, who had previously failed to score any points in 2017, admitted that all the incidents in front had benefitted him, and conceded he had never expected to finished in the points in Baku, where the long straight hurt McLaren due to its lack of engine power.

"In our case everything worked in our favour," he said. "It's one of those days when you win places by elimination for free, but then it's a shame we can't keep it because of our current deficiencies.

"Scoring two points in Baku was impossible to think [of] before coming here, so it's welcome."

Alonso finished over 32 seconds in front of teammate Stoffel Vandoorne, who was 12th.