Why Bottas may force Alonso to Renault

It was Flavio Briatore who years ago said that Kimi Raikkonen made Mika Hakkinen sound like Jerry Lewis, but if Kimi is indeed a man of few words, sometimes he uses them to express a simple truth, as at Sochi last Sunday: "We [Ferrari] lost out at the start - and then not a lot happened after that..."

Fortunately, a comatose Russian Grand Prix was resuscitated by its tense closing laps, but the circuit at Sochi, which reminds one more than anything of the now defunct Valencia, does not represent F1 circuit guru Hermann Tilke's finest hour. There is one decent corner - a quick left-hander that goes on for ever - but mainly it is long straights and pedestrian 90-degree turns.

That said, something about it has always brought out the best in Valtteri Bottas, and last weekend he was scintillating, outpacing Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton on both Saturday and Sunday, and - rather against expectation, given Ferrari's lockout of the front row - getting the better of Sebastian Vettel and Raikkonen in the race.

Valtteri was the essence of Finnish cool as he held off Sebastian, and with Lewis having one of his mysterious 'off' weekends, it was a very good moment to excel: without him it would have been a Ferrari one-two.

We are only four races into the season, but so quick and composed was Bottas at Sochi that Messrs Wolff and Lauda may be starting to think of him as more than a stop-gap driver, hired in emergency circumstances following Nico Rosberg's shock retirement as world champion.

If Valtteri's form continues like this, the situation may change, but for now another plus is that he and Lewis have an amicable working relationship.

Several drivers, with an eye on a Mercedes drive next year, will have hoped that Bottas would prove nothing more than an efficient number two to Hamilton, and while it will be a surprise if Lewis does not assert himself as the season progresses, the replacement of Valtteri for 2018 is by no means the foregone conclusion many believed.

Such thoughts may well have been in the mind of Fernando Alonso, who had time on his hands on Sunday afternoon, having - thanks to Honda's latest disaster - no part to play in the race, his McLaren stammering to a halt on the formation lap.

Alonso watched the race only because it proved impossible to get an earlier flight to Indianapolis, where he has this week sampled an IndyCar - and an oval - for the first time.

For all Ferrari's resurgence, Alonso continues to insist that he does not regret leaving early for McLaren at the end of 2014, but at Sochi he must have wished he had stayed over in the United States, following his visit to the Barber IndyCar race the previous weekend.

The McLaren MCL32 chassis might be much to his taste, and in qualifying he drove the wheels off it, as usual, but through the trap the Honda was the slowest, which meant that Alonso started - or would have started - 15th.

There's no doubt that Fernando very much likes the McLaren environment - even more so with Ron Dennis gone and Zak Brown at the helm - but his last three seasons have been squandered in all save the financial sense, and inevitably the rumours are strong that he will move at the end of the year.

Where, though, does he go? For all their problems as team-mates 10 years ago, he and Hamilton get along fine nowadays, Lewis saying he laments Fernando's absence from the battle at the front, even claiming he would have no objection to his joining Mercedes, but Toto Wolff is unlikely to consider it so long as Hamilton is aboard - and, as we have said, may anyway find himself with no reason to replace Bottas.

Even though the divisive Marco Mattiacci is long gone, and many Ferrari people still regret Alonso's departure from the team, a return to Maranello is, to put it mildly, unlikely, not least because Vettel would veto it.

Should Daniel Ricciardo end his contract early to go to Ferrari in 2018, Red Bull - keen not to lose Carlos Sainz from the fold - would assuredly promote him from Toro Rosso, so no vacancy there.

Hence the suggestions that, unless Honda makes significant strides very soon, Alonso could return to Renault, with whom - a decade ago - his two world championships were won.

At the beginning of last year, when Renault, after much dithering, returned to Formula 1 in its own name, CEO Carlos Ghosn told me at the launch that he would kill to have Alonso back one day.

Ghosn added, though, that it would be some time before Renault was in a position to attract someone like Fernando, and, having made the decision to commit to Formula 1 so late, it was hardly surprising that the car was nowhere last season. This year, though, Nico Hulkenberg's performances have been encouraging, and Alonso might indeed be tempted.

Whereas, though, a man like Juan Manuel Fangio had an uncanny ability to choose the right team at the right moment, history shows that, sadly for him, Fernando has an almost Chris Amon-like tendency to do the opposite. After leaving Ferrari in 1969, Chris suffered pangs of regret ever after, not least whenever the new flat-12 engine powered Jacky Ickx and Clay Regazzoni passed him.

Whether or not it comes down to a choice between staying with McLaren, hoping to reap some reward after three years of tribulation, or going to Renault, where he had so much success in the past, inescapably Alonso - closing on his 36th birthday - is pondering probably the last major decision of his Formula 1 career.

Renault's power unit, while still not a match for Mercedes and Ferrari, is a good deal closer than what he currently has available to him, but against that, nothing stands still forever in Formula 1, and at the back of Alonso's mind will be the thought of making the move, then having a McLaren-Honda come blasting by. Or, worse, a Sauber-Honda.

These are difficult days for the great warrior of Formula 1.