Alonso’s re-acclimatisation to F1 competition, following his Indianapolis 500 attempt, was not helped by lost track time on Friday due to a hydraulics failure, but he bounced back to qualify a solid 12th.

“We know our weakness, we know our deficit in terms of power,” he said. “I felt more or less from Australia this year, the chassis performs quite OK, in some circuits a little bit better, in some circuits a little bit worse. But this year’s car is very good for my driving style as well.

“I’m able to drive the car was I was doing 10 years ago, I’m able to push the car to the limits in every qualifying and race this year. In that part I’m very happy, and I’m enjoying the laps there.

“Obviously when you cross the line you are missing a couple of km/h on the straight, but the rest of the lap is quite fun to drive.

“I think I can extract the maximum from the car on every lap. Qualifying in Barcelona was good, seventh, but it was a less power effect circuit. Thanks to that we were seventh.

“Here the laps were also very good, we were 12th, but we know from our estimations how much we lose on the straights, but being that distance from the Q2 best time, we were very, very competitive today.”

Swerves “different engine” question

When asked how quick the car would be with a different engine from the Honda, Alonso hedged his bets.

“A very difficult question to answer, because you know, I don’t want to be in the headlines tomorrow saying anything that I don’t know for sure,” he replied. “As I said, we know our estimations, what we are losing on the straights. So we were very competitive.”

He insisted that despite having experienced the chance of winning the Indy 500, he has not changed his mindset towards F1.

He added: “In terms of approaching the race, a win in your mind or not, it doesn’t make a huge difference, you want to perform at your best, you want to extract the maximum from the car, and even when you are there on the grid you are still thinking that something will happen in front of you, the strategy will come to you, or there is a safety car five laps to the end and you re-group again.

“The hope is still always there. I’m always fighting until the chequered flag.”