Mark Hughes: F1's Inside Line

What Fernando alonso has pulled off in the last two races (before Japan) is quite remarkable.

In the white heat of fuss about his role in the spying saga, with the team preoccupied with the World Council hearing, he has simply gone even further into himself than usual, disappeared into that protective zone we've seen before - the one he released himself from when he stood atop the wheel of his Renault in Brazil '05 screaming at the planet as the new world champion - and dug deep. Where he goes to we cannot know, but it's a place that gives him special powers.

Forget about the ethics of his negotiating ploys with Ron Dennis in Hungary, and think only about his performances coming off the back of a disappointing run in Turkey. At both Monza and Spa he was utterly magnificent, leaving Lewis Hamilton breathless in his wake.

For all that this is ostensibly a team sport, these were solitary performances. Watch him in the team garage or motorhome and there is no visible bonhomie with the team. He communicates with his engineer only within the necessity of getting what he needs from the car, but otherwise he's to be found sitting with his trainer, his manager or his father. Even when he's not around, his little coterie remain together, separate from the rest of the team, apparently distrustful. And, post-Hungary at least, that feeling is probably mutual.

Maybe there is something in his culture that lends itself to mistrust - to looking always for signs of betrayal - and then any resultant success can be particularly heroic. Fernando's predecessor, Juan Pablo Montoya, had it too. Both found that betrayal at McLaren - or believed they had.

The reality is that of all teams McLaren is the one most devoted to - and best-equipped to provide - equality of opportunity. In the case of Montoya, this commitment led to the team compromising its performances last year: McLaren acceded to his wishes during the off-season for a different development direction to Kimi Raikkonen, and this left them producing two different front ends for the MP4-21. The distraction and split resources that ensued definitely did not help the team's cause.

Yet even at McLaren there comes a point where equality has to give way to the necessity of the moment. During Montoya's time it happened during the 2005 Canadian Grand Prix, when a safety car gave the team the perfect opportunity to spring title chaser Raikkonen into the lead - at Montoya's expense. Montoya was not a championship contender and Raikkonen was, so it was simply common sense, regardless of the cover story the team used for an explanation afterwards.

Yet even at this stage Montoya still had faith in the equality of the team, refused to believe that McLaren had deliberately disadvantaged him. He reckoned anyone who believed that was a fool. He's probably less certain now. The point is, he did appear to try harder to fit in there than Alonso has. Had Alonso been in the same situation, you can be sure he would have believed the worst.

It is when Fernando feels alone and fighting the odds that he seems to produce his best stuff. For the past few races he has been operating behind enemy lines and now, at the critical time - in the deep, nitty-gritty, high-stake grind of a title run-in - he's suddenly stepped up a gear. Given that his title rival Hamilton has been leading the championship for most of the year, Alonso has made his rival's position psychologically difficult. Hamilton's the hunted, Alonso the hunter.

But the scale of Alonso's fightback becoming apparent is just the sort of stimulus to trigger Hamilton onto new heights. His career is littered with situations where the need to respond to a situation has led him to squeeze more from himself than he knew he had.

The question is: will Hamilton's cause be aided by the team? Given the acrimonious background - that the team might have justification in feeling betrayed by Alonso's actions in threatening to use the email evidence on his lap- top - might the team be tempted now to do what Alonso has accused them of doing all year? Absolutely not.

Unlike at Montreal '05, this time there is no competitive reason to favour one driver over another. There may be emotional reasons, but if McLaren boss Ron Dennis was going to allow them to determine his course of action, he would surely have done so in Hungary. Now, unless something disastrous unfolds, it's a case of which McLaren driver wins.

My betting is that McLaren will remain as absolutely committed to equality as ever - and that to win it Lewis is going to have to reach within himself, just as he has done many times before in his career, just as Alonso has recently done.

But should Fernando retire from any of the three remaining races with any sort of mechanical failure - lack of hydraulic pressure maybe - then it can be imagined just how that might be interpreted. Not just by Fernando, but by the watching world too.