Motorsport: 'Squeaky clean' Alonso

Of all the dramatis personae in what is now widely accepted as the greatest sporting scandal of them all, Fernando Alonso has emerged the most squeaky clean.

Flavio Briatore's fall was spectacular. Pat Symonds, Renault's chief engineer, is in exile from Formula One.

Nelson Piquet Jnr, who crashed his car deliberately, was granted immunity but must now wait to discover if there is a team bold enough to hire him.

Meanwhile Alonso, the hero here 12 months ago, returns to Singapore, a year after the "Crashgate" race, his evidence accepted by the World Motor Sport Council and his name cleared.

He has not been stripped of his victory here last time.

He has retained his personal sponsorship deal with Mutua Madrilena, one of two sponsors to have ended their deals with Renault. As for the rumoured move to Ferrari, few can see any reason to think it has been derailed.

But first he has to deal with this weekend, still caught firmly within the eye of the storm, confronted by a growing number of people who are having trouble accepting that he had no knowledge of his team's elaborate plan to fix the race in his favour.

Surely it had to have crossed his mind that something odd was afoot when he was brought in to refuel after only 12 laps, dropping from 11th place to 20th and last? "Never," he snaps. "But we move on again from that incident."

Easy to say, harder to do. He of all people should know that controversy does not blow away just because you'd like it to. The belief persists in some circles that he must have known.

"I don't read," he snaps again when asked whether it angers him to see such allegations.

"I am very lucky that I don't read newspapers and I don't read comments of the people. I live in the present and I live in the real world. People can read, and they can read what the FIA have issued - the resolution. It is quite clear. If it's not understood there, then they have a problem of reading."

Okay, but what about his feelings about the situation? Increasingly irritated at the persistence of the media, he becomes more aggressive: "To be clear, and probably to finish on what happened last year ... I was in Paris to co-operate with the FIA, to help in the investigation with my team as well. I am happy that everything is clear now, and I am happy also that it is clear I was not involved in the incident and had nothing in that matter."

Still the questions come. After Piquet and Symonds were offered immunity, did he feel there was a witch-hunt against Briatore, the man who built his career at Renault? "No comment."

Is he surprised that Symonds was so deeply involved in this affair?

"Nothing to say. Everyone will have his opinion and again, there is too much talk about last year. I think it's time to move on and at least me and the team will move on. If you keep asking questions about last year, sorry, but I will not answer any more."

Who is Witness X, the anonymous source who sealed Briatore's fate, and believed to be a race engineer from Renault? "Nothing to say."

Without doubt, Alonso is a fine driver - the best currently out there, along with Lewis Hamilton.

He is also a master at playing the ingenue. Yet in his first title-winning year with Renault in 2005 he complained he felt abandoned by the team, that it is important for him to work very closely with his engineers, and that when this did not happen he felt 'like an island within the team'.

At McLaren, he liked to exercise strong political influence when he had an upstart rookie named Lewis Hamilton as his team-mate, in 2007.

During qualifying for that year's Hungarian GP, for example, Hamilton did not let Alonso pass, as requested by his team under an ongoing agreement about which driver had priority.

Alonso got his own back by holding up Hamilton during their final pit stops - the Englishman did not have time to finish a final flying lap to challenge for pole.

Asked to quantify the amount by which the chequered flag prevented him from starting a final lap, Hamilton said: "I missed my second quick lap by about the same amount of time I was held back in the pit stop ..."

Alonso raised his hands and feigned innocence. "I was waiting for instructions after the second stop," he said.

"It was the same as the first: someone times the gaps between us and cars on the track. On the first stop they told me to go, but we had the blanket thing. And there was a delay while we were changing the front wing. The second time, we didn't lose anything."

Observers counted at least five seconds between the lollipop being raised, the signal that the driver is free to go, and Alonso actually leaving.

McLaren, clearly embarrassed by the mounting tension between their star drivers, explained this was because Alonso's engineer was still studying the GPS signals of rival cars to choose the optimal moment to release him from the pits.

Privately, some thought otherwise but were too diplomatic to voice their opinions.

"You can ask the team this question," Alonso said, "because although I am always monitoring the stops by the radio and they do the calculations and find the gaps. I just drive the car. I am always ready to go. Sometimes we wait for five seconds, 10, 40 ..."

"Two or four seconds, maybe," Hamilton responded with clenched teeth. "Not 40 ..."

In a tough sport that is not the playground of saints, Alonso is no white knight. Needs must, and all that. You won't find anyone in senior management at McLaren who buys the little boy lost act, even if circumstances currently deny them the chance to put their opinions on record.

He is guarded when talking about his future, but concedes that the question of which driving uniform he will wear next year was a good one, to which he will hopefully know the answer soon.

There are complications to a deal with Ferrari, but few doubt that a deal was done two years ago, just as Kimi Raikkonen did his 2007 deal with the Scuderia in 2005.

The indications are that Ferrari are juggling their three-into-two problem with Alonso, Raikkonen and the recovering Felipe Massa in the best way that they can, and that they are likely to defer a decision until they know the Brazilian's full level of fitness.

Meanwhile, as he waits, Alonso's beleaguered team crumbles. Renault have lost their title sponsor Dutch bank ING (a £40m-a-year backer) together with Spain's Mutua Madrilena insurance company.

The former was due to go anyway at the end of the season, but both cut their losses rather than risk stigma.

- INDEPENDENT