His Aston Martin team knew in advance that Monza wouldn't play to the strengths of the AMR23, and that was reflected in qualifying, with Alonso earning 10th place and his lowest grid position of the season.
Despite a typically feisty race, the Spaniard could not better ninth in the race, which matched Hungary as his worst result of the year, but at least extended his record of scoring in every event thus far.
"Obviously many, many lessons we need to take from this race," he said. "We were not competitive, so that's the main focus for us, to try to understand in this type of circuit what we need to do differently into the future, also next year when we come here.
"Race-wise there is not much to talk about, we were slow from the beginning to the end, and it was not possible to fight better than ninth.
"So we take these points, but hopefully many lessons."
Asked if it was frustrating not to have a competitive car, he said: "It is frustrating because it was a very demanding race mentally and physically to drive the car that was, with very low grip, very tricky to drive. So for me one of the most difficult races of the year.
Source: Autosport