Alonso makes sure there are no on-track doubts

Whatever your views on the 'inconsistencies' between McLaren's and Fernando Alonso's versions of the events surrounding the crash that caused the Spaniard to miss the start of the 2015 season, there can be no doubt the Spaniard's first day back behind the wheel of a Formula 1 car proves he has lost none of his prodigious ability.

The double F1 world champion completed 45 "trouble-free" laps behind the wheel of the Honda-powered MP4-30, and outpaced his team-mate Jenson Button in both of Friday's free-practice sessions for the Malaysian Grand Prix.

This should at least help quell any fears Alonso may have suffered lasting damage from his testing crash, or that he might not be capable of driving an F1 car again to the same level.

It also suggests the exhaustive medical tests (both in his native Spain and in the UK) Alonso underwent since suffering a concussion on February 22 - which we are told found absolutely nothing wrong with McLaren-Honda's star signing - were entirely rigorous.

The spotlight on Alonso is unlikely to diminish any time soon © XPB

After a few careful exploration laps in the morning, Alonso - who has always gone well around Malaysia's Sepang circuit - looked every bit his old self on track, hustling the car and exploring its limitations. The Spaniard declared himself happy with his first day back driving again, though perhaps feeling a little under-prepared physically after so long out of the car. McLaren too was delighted with his performance.

"Nothing exciting [to say], because he was up to speed, 100 per cent, from the first moment," McLaren racing director Eric Boullier told AUTOSPORT. "I think everybody was listening carefully, because it was his first debrief, and I think it was quite interesting to see how prepared he was.

"He knows already what he wants, but luckily the day went trouble-free. It was our first day actually where we could run without any issue to fix, just working on car performance, data-gathering, stuff like this. It was a really good day.

"Fernando is exactly as he was before [the crash] and he looks happy. That means everything is working fine."

The message from McLaren is that it is happy with Alonso, and Alonso is happy with the team. The Spaniard said as much during his first official day back on F1 duty in the Sepang paddock on Thursday, when he was passed fit by the FIA to race and then faced the world's media for the first time since his testing crash. There he said he had "zero doubts", "zero concerns" and that he "fully" trusts the team.

Everyone wanted to hear his view of what happened on that February day in Barcelona - from the horse's mouth if you will. When the press conference was over, most people felt Alonso's explanations left more questions than they answered. But is this really the case?

Much has been made of the fact Alonso said on Thursday that his steering "locked" to the right as he tried to negotiate Turn 3 at the Circuit de Catalunya, which carried him into the wall.

Alonso was previously quoted in a McLaren press release as saying he recalled a "sense of 'heavy' steering" prior to the accident. This led many observers to conclude Alonso was contradicting McLaren's official version of events, by suggesting there was definitely a problem with his car's steering rather than sticking to the earlier statement that simply referenced the sensation he recalled.

This is central to the sense of controversy surrounding what happened (nobody seems to know for sure and if they do they are not saying), what McLaren thinks happened, and what Alonso thinks happened. The feeling, of course, is that somebody is hiding something. But who, and for what reason exactly?

McLaren says it has conducted a thorough investigation into Alonso's accident, examined his crashed car completely, compiled an extensive report, and shared it with the FIA, which has raised no objections (publicly or otherwise) to its findings.

McLaren didn't have much information in the aftermath of the crash © XPB

If Alonso is suggesting the car failed, what has McLaren got to gain from saying it didn't? After all, cars break all the time in motor racing - lessons are learned and we all move on. These failures are not hung around the necks of teams like millstones, unless they contribute to a fatality on the circuit, which thankfully did not occur in this case.

The only possible reason McLaren could have for not explaining a car problem that contributed to the accident is some kind of technical experimentation on Alonso's car that it does not want revealed to the world. Perhaps some kind of trick mechanism related to the steering that carries sensitive intellectual property with it?

Teams are allowed to experiment in tests, remember, which are not strictly governed by FIA technical regulations, except for certain key safety elements (crash structures etc.).

However, McLaren insiders say the steering system on Alonso's car during pre-season testing was the same as that used by Jenson Button and reserve driver Kevin Magnussen (who deputised for Alonso at the following Barcelona test and the Australian Grand Prix).

Alonso apparently sets his steering rack up slightly differently to his team-mates - because he prefers a slower speed of steering and more steering lock - but otherwise the specifications matched.

It is also possible that Alonso hasn't been inconsistent in what he says about the steering. English is not his first language, and his description of the steering being "locked" may be consistent with the earlier team statement of the steering feeling 'heavy'.

If we're going to get into minutiae here, remember the McLaren statement about Alonso's sensation was not a verbatim quote, so it's possible he never actually used the word "heavy" in the first place.

Everything Alonso did say on Thursday suggests he feels certain there was some kind of problem with the car before he crashed. On Thursday, he said: "There are some changes to the steering rack and other parts [for this weekend]. That was main thing." Perhaps the changes he refers to are not wholesale, simply minor tweaks (including the extra sensors) to alleviate any concerns he might have had about the problem he says he recalls. But remember he was sedated for several hours immediately following that accident, and suffered a concussion (nobody is disputing that), so it's possible he doesn't remember exactly what happened - even if he says that he does.

Human memory is notoriously unreliable when the brain is conscious throughout an event. How often do people 'misremember' what happened to them in a certain instance, or fill in gaps in their memory with information they believe to be true. We have all, at some time or another, done a double take when we think we've seen something a certain way and then realised it is not what we thought it was. The term for this is 'optical illusion'. Basically, the senses play tricks on us from time to time, and the brain lies to us...

That does not mean the person who these senses and brain belong to is a liar. Simply that they are human and fallible - just like the machinery built for Formula 1 by fellow humans.

Alonso gave a detailed account of the crash in Malaysia on Thursday © LAT

But it is also entirely possible that a high-functioning human being like Alonso remembers everything about his accident (up until the point he was sedated), and that he did feel a problem with the car that the team subsequently couldn't discover. It is entirely possible that neither side has anything to hide, and that this is one of those anomalous accidents about which we will never realise the full picture.

If there were a genuine safety concern resulting from the accident and McLaren's investigation, the FIA would be duty bound to react. Other than passing Alonso fit to race in Malaysia (as is its duty), F1's governing body has publicly kept its counsel.

There has been no evidence to support the wild and rampant speculation that Alonso suffered an electric shock behind the wheel - as the result of some sort of ERS or battery malfunction - or that he fainted while driving and then crashed (as the result of inhaling some smoking battery fumes), or that he has some form of health problem that made him 'black out' at the wheel and then crash.

These theories, which abounded in the immediate aftermath of Alonso's crash, caused much anger at McLaren, as the world's voracious 24/7 media demanded instant answers to questions about an accident that happened largely out of view, in an event that was not covered by the multiple TV angles normally present at a grand prix. So it issued the following statement on February 23:

"Over the past 24 hours, we have been carrying out a detailed analysis of the damage to Fernando's car, and its associated telemetry data, in order fully to understand the cause, or causes, of his accident. Even at this early stage, we have been able to reach some firm conclusions.

"His car ran wide at the entry to Turn Three - which is a fast uphill right-hander - allowing it to run onto the Astroturf that lines the outside of the track. A consequent loss of traction caused a degree of instability, spitting it back towards the inside of the circuit, where it regained traction and struck the wall side-on.

"Our findings indicate that the accident was caused by the unpredictably gusty winds at that part of the circuit at that time, and which had affected other drivers similarly (eg, Carlos Sainz Jnr).

"We can categorically state that there is no evidence that indicates that Fernando's car suffered mechanical failure of any kind. We can also confirm that absolutely no loss of aerodynamic pressure was recorded, which fact indicates that the car did not suffer any aerodynamic loss, despite the fact that it was subjected to a significant level of g-force. Finally, we can also disclose that no electrical discharge or irregularity of any kind occurred in the car's ERS system, either before, during or after the incident.

"That last point refutes the erroneous rumours that have spread recently to the effect that Fernando was rendered unconscious by an electrical fault. That is simply not true. Our data clearly shows that he was downshifting while applying full brake pressure right up to the moment of the first impact - something that clearly would not have been possible had he been unconscious at the time.

"Our data also confirms that Fernando's car struck the inside concrete wall, first with its front-right wheel and then with its rear-right. It was a significant lateral impact, resulting in damage to the front upright and axle.

"After the initial impact, the car slid down the wall for about 15 seconds before coming to a halt. All four wheels remained attached to the car, but no damage was sustained by the bodywork or crash structure between the front and rear wheels."

Alonso looked on form in the car during free practice on Friday © LAT

The team now admits this statement was somewhat rash, in the sense that it was not released with a full grasp of the facts. Statements about the wind contributing to Alonso's crash (categorically refuted by Alonso on Thursday) and attempts to reconstruct its circumstances were done hastily, as a response to the swirl of conspiracies. Alonso himself alluded on Thursday to the need to say something - anything almost - to dampen the speculation.

"When you see the video, even a hurricane would not move the car at that speed," he said. "Also if you have any problem, medical issue, normally you will lose power and go straight to the outside, never to the inside.

"That's one thing. Honestly, with the accident and the repercussions, a lot of attention on that day, and probably the first answers and first press conference that the team had, my manager whatever, it was just some guess - the wind, maybe other possibilities.

"That creates a little bit of confusion, but you cannot say nothing for three or four days until I remember everything, because these three or four days become even worse. They said the theory of the wind, but obviously it was not."

Alonso has contradicted his team's statement, but he also accepts McLaren was put in a difficult situation, to which it had to react. The subsequent impromptu press conference given by team chief Ron Dennis during the final pre-season test (where he suggested Alonso hadn't even been concussed) did not help matters in this regard, but this is something Dennis himself now admits was mistaken.

These contradictions do not necessarily mean team and driver are at loggerheads (a dynamic that is all too easy to recreate given what happened the last time these two were racing together in 2007). As Boullier points out, both sides are "happy" this weekend.

Amid all the focus on the apparent inconsistencies between McLaren's statements about what happened and Alonso's statements about what happened, there is an important point to make about one consistency from McLaren in its statements.

"We can categorically state that there is no evidence that indicates that Fernando's car suffered mechanical failure of any kind."

This is something McLaren has maintained since the accident happened. 'So what?' you might say. But the point is the word "evidence". McLaren has found nothing in its exhaustive analysis to suggest Alonso's MP4-30 suffered a mechanical failure before his accident, but that does not mean there wasn't a mechanical failure. It means simply they couldn't find whatever problem Alonso experienced.

That's why extra sensors have been fitted to Alonso's car for this race, as he explained on Thursday.

"It's clear that there was a problem in the car, [but] it's not found on the data at the moment," he said.

Alonso was sedated on his way to hospital after the Barcelona crash © XPB

"One of the things I did in the factory last week, with the simulator, I went through with the engineers the data available. We went through the moments; some spots here and there, but not a clear answer, but I understand completely and support the team until they find a clear answer that it was this or that.

"Also data acquisition on that particular area of car is not at the top. There are some new sensors here this race. Last week at the factory was working in the simulator and trying to explain all these new sensors and new parts for this race.

"If after one month we haven't found in the data, whatever part we have not found, maybe it's not available in the data. Maybe it will never be."

Maybe the car failed; maybe it didn't. Maybe Alonso recalls a car failure that didn't actually happen. Maybe he recalls an actual car failure - perhaps temporary - that genuinely can't be found.

Whatever, we are likely to never know what really happened. But what we do know is that McLaren and Alonso are back together, their first proper day working together since the crash has been a success, and at this early stage of his comeback Alonso looks every bit the formidable world champion driver every F1 fan has wanted to see back out on circuit.

Of this we can be certain.