He is happy now McLaren are allied to Renault but the 2005 and 2006 F1 champion has had a difficult decade. Still, he believes he has always made the right call given the situation

Fernando Alonso has so often presented a stern grimace for the past three years that it is hugely pleasing to meet him relaxed and buoyant and now sporting a broad grin. He is one of the greatest talents of this generation but the latter part of his career has been almost as torturous to watch as it must have been for him to endure. This season, sitting in the paddock, the Spaniard exudes optimism as well as the familiar determination that has brought him two world championships and kept him fighting through a rollercoaster career in Formula One. Times may have been hard but the passion that drives Alonso has never left him.

After wrestling with a woefully underpowered McLaren-Honda for those three years the negativity became so all-encompassing that he tired even of talking about it. Now McLaren are allied with Renault and looking to return to the front of the grid Alonso is happier to open up on what kept him going.

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“I am a very competitive person in everything,” he says. “Not only F1 but in everyday life. That has helped me to continue for so long. Every day, every year, every new season is a reset from the last and you are still hungry for success, to do things better and better.

“I always had that, even when I was a kid in a go-kart or when I was playing soccer or tennis, that need of winning. It was there all my life and it’s still there now.”

It drove him to those two titles for Renault, in 2005 and 2006, when he became the then youngest double world champion, aged 25, both times beating Michael Schumacher, who already had his seven championships. Such was Alonso’s talent that more seemed inevitable. However, now 36, he has yet to repeat the feat, while Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel have gone on to take four apiece.

The Spaniard’s career since leaving Renault has been one of huge expectation that has remained unfulfilled. A torrid year alongside Hamilton at McLaren followed before he returned to Renault for two years, during which time he might have joined Brawn or Red Bull – both of whom proved to have title-winning cars – but he opted to join Ferrari in 2010. By the end of 2014 his relationship with the Scuderia had broken down and he returned to the bright hope, and then disappointment, of McLaren’s renewed partnership with Honda.

His relationships with teams have been known to be difficult, doubtless fuelled by the frustration he has felt at not quite being in the right place at the right time. But now in his 17th season in F1, there is no interest in dwelling on the past.

“I don’t regret any decisions,” he says. “Obviously if you can see the future with a crystal ball, you would make different decisions because the performance in the following years were very different. But I don’t regret it because at the moment I took those decisions, I would make the same decision 100 times again. For me at that point it was black and white.

“I don’t look back but I understand the questions. The fans would like to see me winning.”

He is understandably popular. Winning or not, Alonso is compelling, with an ability to extract more from a car than almost any other driver. His defence against Schumacher at Imola in 2005 was a masterclass. A year later he qualified his Renault in fifth place at Monza while missing part of the rear bodywork, a performance that the team’s data suggested should have been impossible.

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In 2010, despite his Ferrari not being as quick as the Red Bull, it was only a strategic error by his team that cost him the title at the last round. In 2012 he fought back again. Ferrari opened with the fifth fastest car but Alonso’s skill manhandled it to a lead in the championship and then to a deciding final race only to be denied once again by Vettel.

He acknowledges the German and Hamilton as great talents but insists it is still Schumacher that commands his greatest respect. “Michael was a competitor, a driver that never gave up, he never stopped believing in the win,” he says. “It was difficult to open a gap in terms of points because he was always there delivering something special. Michael didn’t need the perfect car – he was always delivering the result.”

To beat Schumacher Alonso had to show extraordinary resolve, a trait informed by his love of cycling. “That effort, that mental strength when you have a long climb. You are like the iPhone – you have 70% of your battery and you need to have zero at the top,” he explains. “So how you manage that with the bike it is always quite challenging and attractive. It is physical and mental strength you need to have in road biking.”

He admits to becoming frustrated (which is often made public in exasperated radio messages) but insists that he has taken positives from every experience, particularly with British teams. “Maybe the British culture is that way,” he says. “For us more Latin characters maybe we get very high and they will always calm things. When things are bad they are very united, they are very proactive to change things. This has influenced me a lot in my career.”

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Alonso’s fifth place in Melbourne flattered McLaren’s real position in this season’s pecking order and he has warned that a successful upgrade of the car over the next two months is crucial to the season ahead. To qualify 13th for Sunday’s race in Bahrain proves there is work still to be done and he will be busy. He will also compete at Le Mans as part of a full season of the World Endurance Championship with Toyota. With two victories in the Monaco Grand Prix, winning the 24-hour race would leave Alonso missing only the Indianapolis 500 in his pursuit of motor racing’s triple crown.

But at McLaren the mood is already palpably more upbeat and they need to deliver to keep him on board. He is the team’s greatest asset and still capable of making a difference beyond the machinery he is given. Last season the recurring question was whether he would call it a day in F1; for now, happy behind the wheel, his passion for the sport is as strong as ever and once again the only season that matters is this one.

“In 2007-08 I thought: ‘Maybe I will race a couple more years,’ but then situations change, your career changes,” he says. “It is difficult to take in how long you have been doing one thing when you compete at the highest level and always with the highest intensity.”